Bowmore 1989 / 23 Year Old / The Whisky Agency

This baby from the new ‘fights’ series. 1989? FWP or not? Let’s see… (especially since FWP + sherry works as well as coffee + mustard in my experience…;-))

Colour: dark straw.

Nose: ha-ha, this is interesting! It’s a prototypical cowstably Bowmore (wot???), full of old leather, horse sweat, scented soap, wacky old walnut liqueur, old Malaga wine, Manzanilla, chalk, seawater, black olives and simply massive whiffs of cigar box. It’s actually hard to catch, as it keeps changing…

With water: water kind of freezes it. Cigars, seawater and, cough, cough, lavender.

Mouth (neat): it is a tad unlikely, dirty-ish, kind of unsteady and curiously gamy and even foul, but that’s what makes it ‘fun’! Imagine a mixture of mustard, salt, chocolate, coffee, chicken bouillon, kippers, violet sweets, stout beer and chocolate. No I’m not kidding.

With water: adds some vegetal notes to the mix, such as parsley. What a funny soup!

Finish: calms down, with the lemon kicking in and lemon usually takes control of just any malt whisky once it’s in. Briny aftertaste. More kippers.

Comments: my scores are purely ‘organoleptic’ but should I take ‘wackiness’, ‘unlikeliness’ and ‘fun’ into consideration, this baby would be worth 90. Try to try it!

SGP:464 - 82 points.