The Balblair 1991-2009

Tasting notes: 
     A surprisingly light color, like polished oak floors in the ballroom of a European chapeau. [Stephen:  Bill, please tell me that was supposed to be “château”!]  It noses like gunpowder from the opening salvo at Shiloh on a spring day in April of 1862, or maybe like walking into a kitchen at Martinmas, where Martinshörnchen and toffee-flavored meringues are being cooked (or perhaps where an over-zealous and somewhat neurotic hausfrau has already begun baking fruitcakes, well in advance of the need for the alcohol and fruit to commence their alchemically magical dance).  It’s like being in Erda’s [maltgonewild.com]{this little bit of censoring brought to you by our new Adult Only Site, Malt Gone Wild}
     A perfect mouth, like shifting into 2nd gear in my Dad’s 1957 Ferrari 250 Testa Rossa.  It’s rich, like the chiaroscuro in Rembrandt’s paintings are rich, like the texture of the teak trim on Santana, Humphrey Bogart’s yacht.  Or, nearer to our income bracket–but still unattainable–like a 1957 mahogany Lyman motorboat, plying the eastern side’s calm summer waters of Lake Michigan.
     A glorious finish, starting with low arioso-like undertones like the cello bass notes in the first movement of Brahms’ Ein Deutsches Requiem. Or more like an elephant singing “Old Man River” in a subsonic register. By the time it’s in my gullet, I’ve forgotten I’m drinking whisky; it’s more like a harem of succubi making sweet, crunchy, syrupy [maltgonewild.com], and then [maltgonewild.com]ing my esophagus for seven eternities. Oatmeal cookies, Honeycomb cereal, raw honeycomb, all ground in a red marble pestle with a brass and mahogany mortar by a coven of Wiccans. Gold-thread tapestries stained by sorghum. And just when it seems there’s nothing more to express, a hidden tobacco peat bomb explodes (mutedly) and resounds all the way down. All. The. Way. Down.