The Convalmore 36 Year 2013 Limited Edition

Tasting notes:
The Convalmore 36 nose opens like a sultan’s leather-hooded peregrin falcon with little clove cigarettes in its beak, clutching six-shooters in its talons, opens its eyes as it springs after its prey. Its body is a carmelized Buddha belly or, really, just a fine Bollywood caramelly-booty-shaking, or dare I say, the laughing Buddha‘s booty twerking off a surfeit of pimento-cheese blintzes drizzled with grapefruit juice reduction. (You got that, too, didn’t you?) The nose is, even after opening, one note only: but what a note. Organs, tubas, trumpets, and pan pipes all playing the same note as the tolling temple bell.
     The mouth is savory and deep, belying the Buddha belly note. Without water, it’s got anise seeds dipped in prussic acid melting into mouth, searing my tongue, branding my soul, irrevocably, immaculately. Conceive this, then, too: Pumpernickel croutons put into a little boy’s school snack sack instead of the pretzels he was expecting. He wept at first, chagrined, crying out against Fate and Mommy (and really, aren’t the two the same?) until the sour tang and fluffed-crunch worked its way deep into his imagination, planting seeds that would one day grow into artisinal pumpernickel asiago pretzels twisted into Klein bottles and Projective planes.

[John: Bill! You swore you’d never mock me for sharing with you that story from when I was little!]

John, I use that image as a sign of my abiding love for you and my disappointment that you haven’t recently given me any pretzels. The mouthfeel is delicious; bright and filled with the essence of fatty tuna belly, illuminated by ultraviolet light in a tanning salon until cooked to a splendid medium rare, bedecked with rain-speckled clover leaves, and finished with a honey barbecue sauce. Giant sequoias so large they need lightning rods arrayed in their upper registers like a King’s crown.
     The finish brings white chocolate truffles mixed into cake batter morels, all rooted up by trained pig in a Godiva store. I can see clearly now—the rain is gone—and everything was well-explained to me by my optometrist who figuratively plucked the scales from my eyes.
     With water, it all opens up. First off is a banana-powered hybrid Ugli fruit: very low carbon footprint, very green. We’d recommend giving it to your favorite nephew in a juice box. There’s a pre-formed perfumed smokey aftertaste, like the delectation of a quick lick of a maple sap tap. The musk of the American Ballet Theater’s laundry bin after a performance of Swan Lake. Or a revisionist Paris Opera Ballet performance of Swann’s Way Lakeside Cabin (music by Vinteuil).

[Stephen: Bill, no one will get that joke.]

Not even Dr. Whisky? Well, everyone can enjoy the non-sweet spicy Thai Cheese fusion, like lint from a dryer used solely for royal merkins.

Rating: