The Benromach Traditional

Tasting notes:
    It’s hard to imagine the three of us here at the Malt Impostor disagreeing on anything, since we’re like Plato’s ideal tripartite Republic:  a marriage of sorts made of a philosopher king, an honor-lover, and a prisoner of the flesh; but at times, we split like a cleft diamond, like LeBron from Cleveland, or like Uruguay from the World Cup.  In these rare cases, it comes to one of us to submit a minority report, and this BenroMachoMan, this pervasive wildfire of well-warranted hyperbole, has fallen to me.  I come to praise it, not to consign it to the ash heap of history.  
     It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key. The key is not Russia’s national interest, nor even Scotland’s. Nor is the key a turducken, although it is closely aligned to that Cajun wonderment.  It is a seabacmonster:  a smoked oyster, wrapped with smoked salmon, enveloped in applewood bacon, swaddled in smoked seaweed.
     Where’s there’s smoke, there’s fire, and the Benromach’s oily, pencil-graphitic, greasy mouthfeel bubbles out of a mudhole like chthonic messages from the Underworld.  Sure, John and Stephen might liken it to drinking from a tadpole-infested puddle, sucking the water up while leaving the tadpoles to die, but I found it like eating a custardy quiche, loaded with leeks, smoked sardines, and the ground-up good intentions of every elected sincere politician confronted with harsh realities, old debts, and the wicked, wicked ways of mankind.
     The elegant finish exudes Bananas Foster crystalized in flaming Sambuca and dark Puerto Rican rum. It’s down like Maria Callas singing the Habanera: Love is a little bird, and it just happens to be a phoenix, emerging gloriously from the ash heap of history.
     
 
Rating: