Old and Rare Whiskies - Part II
Another day, another set of whiskey reviews -- we're back in business! There were a flurry of wonderful tasting events in the last few months, including the first annual whiskey festival hosted by Taurus, one of my favorite bars in Miami.
Bowmore 27, The Vintner's Trilogy (48.3% ABV) - Bowmore's Vintner's Trilogy is a series of special edition bottles, each aged in a different set of wine or fortified wine casks after an initial 13-year spell in ex-bourbon barrels. The first two entrants are an 18-year-old scotch that does its post-secondary education in manzanilla sherry butts and a 26-year-old scotch finished in wine barriques. I haven't gotten the chance to try either, but I want to seek them out now that I've tried the crown jewel of the lineup, this 27-year-old peated Islay whisky that the distillery dumped after 14 years in port pipes. Port is a hit-and-miss finish in my experience, and even some of my favorite distilleries have put out disappointing whiskies finished in port (e.g., Kilchoman Port Cask 2018). On the other hand, Laphroaig's 2013 Cairdeas Port Wood is still discussed with reverence among whiskey lovers. Bowmore got it right with this knockout of a dram.
It is heavily fragrant, with an alluring mixture of dark chocolate, raspberry coulis, and woodsmoke on the nose. The palate is richer than the ABV, while the bite is lower: toffee, more peat, and stewed fruits swirl together. This dram reminds me of that old Laphroaig, albeit costing five times as much! Its final notes are classic sweet-and-peat, with more smoke than I'd expect for a scotch that's just a few years younger than I am, and I was sorry to see it go. A
Bowmore Vault Edition Sea Salt (51.5%) - One of the funniest recurring motifs in The Fantastic Mr. Fox is how characters keep referring to the main character's son Ash as a little "different" (with a signature hand gesture, to boot). This Sea Salt special release of Bowmore is definitely (waves hands around) different. It's not bad-different, exactly, and not amazing-different, just . . . different. Salt wasn't the dominant theme to my palate. Instead, this one tasted young, medicinal, and herbal, with heavy doses of acidic citrus and a slight drying effect that left me with a puckering sensation. That astringency may read as salt to some. This is a dram that doesn't taste like anything else I've encountered in Bowmore's lineup, and reminds me more of peated Bunnahabhain. To the extent the goal was to create something entirely novel out of Bowmore's distillate, they accomplished that goal. Now the only question is whether people really want to pay $125+ for it. B-
That Boutique-y Whisky Company Islay #2 (48.6%) - Whiskey shows are such a wild, wonderful, frustrating mess. Tiny little thimbles in lieu of glencairns. People jostling on all sides (particularly unpleasant in the age of coronavirus). A meager handful of plates of food circulating for seconds before being ravaged by the masses. Not to mention the bombardment upon the palate. After the first few micro-drams, everything starts to blend together on the tongue, and buzzy-brain hardly helps. Glendronach 12, 18, Benriach 10 Curiositas, Jameson Cold Brew and Black Barrel, Aberlour A'bunadh Alba, Rittenhouse, Laphroaig Quarter Cask in quick succession. Sweet, rich, peaty, coffee (literal coffee, in the case of that Jameson), apples, mint, smoke.
And then I had a chance to try this stellar, memorable, 25-year-old Islay scotch from an unnamed distillery, bottled by That Boutique-y Whisky Company. It was the secret "under the table" bottle that some exhibitors bring to these things, and which they share with guests who demonstrate a higher-than-average level of interest or knowledge about the hobby. My understanding is that this retails for about $200 for a half-size bottle, which is pretty reasonable all things considered. Laphroaig 25 commands a similar price per volume. I guessed that this was a distinguished older Laphroaig, although the wiser distributor told me that he believed it was Ardbeg. Most authorities online side with him, although there are dissenting voices.
Regardless, this is a muscular tiger of a dram, featuring waves of toffee, sinewy smoke, stewed pears, and well-oiled leather. My impression was that it's largely if not entirely ex-bourbon, although the person pouring it told me there may be a sherry cask in there as well. This one is smokier and less fruity than Laphroaig 25 and hits all of the classic older Islay notes. Even though it plays it a little safe, it was the liquid highlight of the night. A
Highland Park The Dark (52.9%) and Highland Park Florida Edition (57.8%) - Two for the price of one in today's final review, these two scotches produce an interesting contrast and also are illustrative of the difference between official distillery bottlings and single casks (whether from the distiller or an independent bottler). Official wide releases are by necessity vattings of numerous barrels -- after all, a wide release necessitates having thousands of bottles, which means combining at least a dozen casks or more. This affords master distillers the chance to balance out different flavor profiles and increases the complexity of the resulting end product. Single casks don't have this luxury and tend to be more unusual, for better or worse. When they're spectacular, they are beautiful and almost tragically ephemeral, every dram accompanied by the knowledge that you'll likely never encounter that exact flavor profile again. But they often lack the composure of standard bottlings and have that "hole in the palate" problem that leaves the drinker craving a little extra sweetness, or richness, etc.
Since I tried these both at Taurus, I wasn't taking detailed notes by the time I reached this table. But I am sure that the 17-year-old official expression, The Dark, beat the pants off an even more exclusive offering, the 15-year-old Florida exclusive single cask. That younger scotch came from a refill sherry and was predominated by nutty, bitter notes alongside classic Highland Park honey. The Dark is completely on the other end, and it tastes like a product aged primarily in first-fill PX sherry casks. It's very modern in its style, meaning bold and flavor-forward: grape jam and a hint of peat. Strong, pleasurable, and easy-drinking. I have mixed feelings about Highland Park and don't like it as much as, say, Talisker, but The Dark is the second-best Highland Park that I've had the pleasure of trying. No. 1 was Delilah's 13th anniversary single cask, which was the best sherry bomb I've ever had. The Dark gets an A-, and the Single Cask gets a C+.