The Bushmills 12 (700 ml distillery exclusive mega-mini)

Tasting notes: 
This beautiful bottle pours out a perfectly lovely measure of the water of life.  Knowing its provenance perhaps predisposes me to think that the nose is quintessentially Irish: sweet, grassy, even upturned and freckled.  Delicious lemons with their bumpy rinds marked in chalk numbers as if readied for a race.  Remarkably light and thin on the mouth.  No cloying or attention seeking here.  Instead, consider the quiet, self-effacing labor of a platoon of little angels supplied with leather-handled pine needles performing acupuncture on my tongue, then dabbing the tiny wounds with blood orange juice.  The finish is long.  Cherry pie?  No, a Hostess Dolly Madison pie whose wax paper wrapper is soaked in palm oil and vegetable shortening.  This gives way to bamboo whispers and juniper berries.  Remarkably, a few drops of water prompts more fruitiness—a fermented fruit salad left with FARC-supporting green peppers, who march it into a rainforest.  Or fruitcake fruit picked out and discarded by crows, blended in a Cuisinart, and whipped into a meringue in a copper mixing bowl.  Clearly, it is a triumph.

Rating:

--On the scale of quotations in which an Irishman likens words to food--
The Bushmills 12 is Malachy McCourt's remark: "I love the sound of words.  They have in my mouth almost the texture of nuts."--That's what she said?

 

                                                                                     --John

  
--John thanks Tom for his generous gift and praises his ingenuity at customs.   Slàinte!