The Tomatin 30 Year Old

Tasting notes:
The Tomatin 30-year old is clove-spiked grapefruit juice poured by an impish (and adorable) 9-year old girl pranking her grandmother who’s watching her while her parents are on a romantic rekindling weekend in Count Odet Philippe’s mansion in Tampa Bay, Florida. If this whisky were finished in Combier Pamplemousse Liqueur casks…well, we wouldn’t be surprised. (Would you?) It’s like being swaddled in a crinkly crinoline curtain that been drenched in citric acid—no, check that. It’s been drenched in some alternate universe’s citric base, not acid. Mangos, pineapples, and whipped cream shaking down a new and terrified frozen yoghurt shop that caters to girls on rollerskates.
     I asked my Impostors for words on the mouth. Stephen was blubbering, “Very special. VERY SPECIAL,” while John was mute. (To be fair, he was pouring his allotment of the Tomatin into his maw using his patent-pending “turkey-baster” method. Yes, it’s as…unique…as it sounds.) It’s tender and sweet and flavorful, like your beloved had set up a candle-lit pinewood bath filled with warm water and rose petals with the sweet jazz stylings of Diana Krall shaping the soundscape. There’s also Palo Santo incense wafting miasmically through the air, and a mobilé made from trumpet parts slowly turning overhead. In short, it’s a typical Thursday night ennobled by the glass of the Tomatin.

     The finish is caramel-coated peppercorns ground in an olivewood mortar and pestle, and it coats the throat and soft palate like a Burlington Coat Factory outlet with a dentist’s office in the back.