The Auchroisk 30 Year 2012 Limited Edition (50 ml bad liquor antidote bottle)

Tasting notes:
     The nose on this bad boy is slightly wood grainy, like waking up inside a carved sarcophagus that is thankfully unused (previously).  Perhaps a sarcophagus intended for Bela Lugosi or Richard III (super quick Google contest: what do those two dudes have in common? -Ready? GO!).  The wood grain quickly gives way to well preserved old book smell.  Think the Cambridge library, or better, the that of the Sorbonne.  Inside the sarcophagus you can only hope to be preserved so well.  The smell is also slightly vegetal and almost fuzzy, like Africanized violet leaves.  
     The age really comes through at this point, and it suddenly hits us: if we could naturalize this dram, it would be eligible to run for a spot in the U.S. Senate.  But it’d never do that.  For one thing, it isn’t a greedy, awful, morally bankrupt excuse for a sack of dog feces.  For another, its name’s too hard to say.  The rural voters would refer to it as “Aw, Christ!”  It wouldn’t seem like it at the time, but it’d be the best thing that could ever happen to the Auchroisk 30.  It’d go back to teaching and would have a renewed appreciation for the exasperation the students express at its attempts at pedagogy, since that exasperation is so much easier to ignore than that of disaffected constituents and unrequited campaign donors.  And if you think this last bit is some stealth comment on the quality of the whisky itself, it isn’t: in this bit, it can’t teach worth a damn simply in light of the fact that it’s a Scotch and not a person.
     On the mouth, the 54.7% alcohol burns so good.  But the angels are NOT happy.  Water smooths it out like a wetted comb drawn across a balding scalp.  On the finish, it’s creamy, but the action occurs almost entirely on the back half of the tongue.  Imagine fine, handmade oxfords with light cream spilt on them, but only below the second eyelet or shoelace hole.  You ever work hard to set up a joke and it just flat doesn’t work?  Well, a couple of sentences ago, you just read the worst shoe tongue joke ever.  Dear God.
     Anyway, the finish also presents with notes of a rare root vegetable paté served in a balsa wood model designed and signed by Howard Hughes.  And the more of it I drink the more I feel my top lip dessicating in real time.  It’s the feeling, no doubt, of John’s Protestant disapprobation, but “sterilized” of the moralized judgments. Thank God.
 

Rating:

–On the scale of occasions on which one would be tempted to exclaim “Aw, Christ!”–
The Auchroisk 30 Year 2012 Limited Edition is noticing the first cracks developing in the huge piece of plexiglass you caulked into place on the inside rim of the shower in your college dorm, after you put it into place, blocked the drain, turned on the water, and watched the water rise over five feet high within–You’ll have to pay a lot for the whole experiment, but what stories you’ll have to tell!  And you’ll always remember it fondly as one of the more amazing things you’ve ever tried.

  



                                                                            –Stephen



Our thanks to Leah Eagel, Alex Conway and Diageo for the sample! 
  
 

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