The Ardmore Traditional Cask

[With the Ardmore Legacy coming out, we thought it was an appropriate time to review the old Ardmore Traditional Cask, which is set to be tweaked next year.] 

Tasting notes:
The Aardmore Traditional Cask opens with bananas flambée moving rapidly towards bananas flamboyant. In fact, it was like a banana boat, not that kind of banana boat, but a canoe carved out of a giant banana, that’s on fire, producing self-referential power-chorded smoke on the water. That is to say, the nose is a Joycean narrator, but less reliable.
     On the mouth, heavily-salted retsina brownies. There’s a high note that goes low, like the tag applied at second base to an imprudent attempted steal. For a non-Islay expression, it’s…pretty darned Islay. Kind of like a Bowmore long-lost cousin, a feral malt that’s long been locked in an attic, forgotten by civilization. Not clear whether the situation is more Flowers in the Attic or Flowers for Algernon: A consensus could not be reached. There’s a light oily peat, a refracted full-spectrum peat, cutting through volcanic ash like a Q-tip through earwax.
     The finish is part and parcel with the mouth, an axis that goes straight from sinus to intestines, bringing pleasant peaty fire the whole way down. 

   
[John: Bill! It’s “Ardmore,” not “Aardmore”! Canna ye nae spell Gaelic?]