A Bowmore Ménage à Deux (50 ml airline bottles)

Tasting notes:
The Bowmore Legend

"Legend" typically evokes a remarkable tale filled with characters and deeds that resonate through the ages. This seems an inappropriate label for this scotch if interpreted in the commonly understood sense; rather I'd say something more on the order of "Wretched Moan-Unworthy Pun" or the "Trailing Inconsequential Facts at the end of a Turgid News Report Regarding a Bloated and Incoherent Britney Spears." But after analyzing an alternate definition of "Legend," it seems clear that Bowmore meant for the scotch to be denoted "Caption Under a Picture." Why would a scotch be named for a few measly words when a picture itself is worth 1000 words? Evidently we are to imagine a suitable picture, or work of art, which itself frames the particular malt expression. As such, the works of art that spring to mind are the epic paintings of Hieronymous Bosch, a vintage black-velvety Dogs Playing Poker, and perhaps most accurately, Damien Hirst's dead cow embalmed in a glass tank of formaldehyde.

Rating:

--On the scale of oft-quoted enigmatic Monty Python Lines--

"Your mother was a hamster, and your father smelt of elderberries." Go ahead, defenestrate Prince Herbert.
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The Bowmore 17
From Frank Sinatra's "It Was a Very Good Year," to Janis Ian's "At 17," all the way to the Kings of Leon's "17" (with numerous others), the number 17 has been very popular with lyricists and singers. Precise and nuanced, like Frank Sinatra's voice; dripping with memorable amber-y pathos like Janis Ian, and perfectly balancing peat and smoke, like the sinuously upraising and lingering chaotic swirl of a Gauloises Blonde cigarette smoldering in an ashtray, unjarred by the sheets of sound ringing out from a patina-dulled, dented saxophone wailing in a 1950's jazz club somehow--miraculously--incongruously--gloriously--transported to a moonlit bog. The kaleidoscopic flavors and Bolero-like finish demand no mere crystal goblet: you must drink from the unscented, de-linted, cleaned innie navel of your beloved. This is a drink to shame a mountain stream and one to call Bacchus down to revel with you.

Rating:

--On the scale of side vegetables--

Lightly steamed asparagus with a perfectly lemony hollandaise sauce. It's so good, you'll make it your main course and not care about the strange odor it imparts to your urine.

--Bill

The Balvenie 15 (50 ml airline bottle)

Tasting notes:
Initial fragrances of pink grapefruit Body Butter and fresh blooms of Vanilla pompona softening in a non-stick pan. On the tongue, a dry sweetness like Tab with cyclamate, or theatre-seat chewing gum. An unhappy finish: bonking on a hors catégorie climb in the Pyrenees despite being chased by a swarthy man rippling underneath a sweat-stained unitard.
   

Rating:

--On the scale of books in the New Testament--

The Balvenie 15 is the Book of James--doctrinally wobbly and theologically promiscuous, an epistle of straw with a dubious claim to the canon.

--John

The Dalwhinnie 15 (50 ml airline bottle)

Tasting notes:
Silica packets hovering equidistant between the tongue and the roof of the mouth, then descending into the lower cheeks, yielding faint hints of Marlon Brando's Don Corleone dental plumpers; hickory chips soaked in turpentine, then acetone infused with Madagascar vanilla beans and retired cloth diapers. Clear, clean burning aftertaste, reminiscent of the sting in the lungs on a snowy January night spent dragging a dead body deep into the woods.
  
Rating:
 --On the scale of Peter Sellers characters in Dr. Strangelove--
The Dalwhinnie 15 is President Merkin Muffley--not the title role, but surprisingly good. It'll steal a scene here and there.

 
                                 --Stephen 

 

The Bowmore 15 (50 ml airline bottle)

Tasting notes:

The reek and acrid bite of an outhouse behind a cathouse down by the docks where sailors are on shoreleave, where they've been served wood alcohol, oysters out of season, and salmon of dubious antecedents and substandard refrigeration; all washed out by a combination of acid rain and red tide algae, suffused with sulphuric overtones of Pittsburgh steel mills and Pacific Northwest pulpy paper mills. Undertones of gasoline, dog vomit, and burning tires from a non-fatal, but nonetheless kinetically exciting, crash at the Indianapolis 500.

Rating:

--On the scale of old TV sitcoms--

The Bowmore 15 (Mariner) is Three's Company--'cuz you'll want to share it platonically with two fine honeys. Or homies. Whatever.

--Bill