The Bruichladdich Peat (50 ml airline bottle)

[This dram has been discontinued, leaving the Port Charlottes as the only peated whiskies coming out of Bruichladdich…] 
 
Tasting notes: 
The Bruichladdich Peat, which replaced Bruichladdich’s famed 3D_ line, but is now itself discontinued, is clearly the result of a mad scientist moment on the part of Master Distiller Jim McEwan.  Ok, a madder-than-most scientist moment for Jim. (The man has been known to experiment.  A lot.)  We Impostors sipped this fine whisky and tried to ascertain the exact madness involved here, and if we don’t have it just right, we’re certainly very, very close:  on the nose, there are clean, high peat notes, but there’s also smoked mackerel here–mackerel that the Laddie team bred especially as a background note here, raising them on a diet of star fruit and grilled peaches.  And there are also notes of grilled pastries, but not just any pastry:  these are specially developed bear claws, based upon a centuries old recipe discovered in the home of a tremendous Dane, and made with sugar refined from dried Valencia orange syrup and free trade organic almonds from Damascus. And like the mackerel, these items are not simply smoked, they’re convected in a special oven fired by compressed peat and the bitter tears of English commoners with whom few of us have anything in common, but with whom none of us have any real problem or issue.  But it’s on the mouth–and this dram doesn’t just have a smooth mouth, it has smooth lips as well–that one realizes that the compressed peat involved is no common peat:  this peat is distinguished and aristocratic; it has blood lines, blue blood lines.  And on the finish, you realize that enjoying this peat is like catching any other noble person in public:  it’s a bit short-lived, but the exit is graceful–it slips into its Rolls before the end of the opera to beat the crowds and steals away, leaving a lingering, and lingual, loss of luxury behind.  But before it departs, the finish is nearly tactile, with sherry hints in it–at least before it peats out entirely.  This last effect we surmised must have been achieved by interbreeding the moss (maybe Kate + Randy?) that will eventually make up the peat so that it is uncommonly pale and awkward–and thus much more likely to shy away from the spotlight.  Even if we’re not exactly right on that last point, we’re pretty sure we’re damn close on the rest, because especially in light of  the young whisky that almost assuredly makes up a good proportion of this dram, it is clearly a mad work of genius. 
  

Rating:
–On the scale of awesome monsters resulting from the efforts of mad scientists–
The Bruichladdich Peat is Peter Boyle’s version of Frankenstein’s Monster--Just watch the clip of “Putting on the Ritz”.  You’ll see what I mean.

    
  

                                                                            –Stephen
  
  

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