The Bowmore 15 (Mariner) — Redux

[This was the first whisky we ever reviewed here at The Malt Impostor, but back then our style was less connected to reality, less realistic, more surrealistic, more out there, way out there, completely unhinged–you pick your favorite descriptor.  We love those old reviews, but they don’t quite do justice to a lot of the whiskies involved.  Now that we’ve evolved our style and developed our noses, we thought we’d take another crack at some of those earliest ones.  What follows is our first attempt along those lines.]

Tasting notes:
The nose on this dram opens with the smoke from a cap gun used to kill a monster in one’s imagination.  Then come the fishnet stockings: made from real fishnet, as in nets for catching fishes, dappled with bits of seaweed, donned for an aquatic themed costume party.  But there’s more: a freshly made coconut meringue in a copper mixing bowl, rifle oil running down the stick from a pineapple sorbet popsicle, a hot summer breeze through a cedar forest.  The mouth waters.  It simply waters.  It inspires Bill to ejaculate, “I love Bowmore! I love whisky!” Now hold on a minute.  Look up definition #2 of that word, you sick puppies.  There’s a hint of grilled sturgeon on the mid-palate, but not just any sturgeon: it’s one a shirtless Vladimir Putin noodled near the shore of the Black Sea and then dispatched with the titanium shiv the former KGB operative never leaves home without.  The mouth eases into the finish with a dryness reminiscent of trying to smoke a petrified cigar.  Careful, there, cowboy: sometimes a petrified cigar is just a petrified cigar, capisce?  The finish is the tortoise beating the hare to the finish line.  It’s cinnamon oil and medicine rubbed into the gums to induce a mix of pleasure and pain.  Damn, it hurts so good.

Rating: