The Tomintoul 16 (50 ml airline bottle)

Tasting notes
      The opening in the glass is a portal to another world: a world where amber dipped in hot tar melts and releases pheromones from mosquitoes trapped in the Jurassic era.  On the mouth, nothing so much as water; scratch that, water that's been diluted with alcohol, like a parent's bottle of scotch raided too often by teenagers who filled it over and over with tap water in the vain hope of evading detection.  It's lighter than a helium isotope (atomic weight 3.01603 vs. atomic weight 4.002602) that's been equipped with a supercharged tachyon jet pack (Thanks to Joshua Hatton for noting that whisky and subatomic particles go together better than expected).  At the finish, though, it's like a subculture growing virally, or maybe just uselessly watering a rainforest on Venus, kind of like a horror film when there are inarticulate whispers presaging the appearance of the monster.  Or not.  Oddly, but unmistakably, salty granules of pretzels scratching an itch I didn't know I had, opening up lodes of citrus and aged Gouda.

--On the scale of Timbrels, tambours, tom-toms, tampenadas, tambourines, tools, Tualatins, terrapins, tomcats, TomKats, and Tam o' Shanters--
The Tomintoul 16 is Tomfoolery. What does it mean? I don't know either.

    
                                                                                 --Bill