The BenRiach 17 Year Old Solstice

60 ml citizen farmer flask

BenRiach-17-Year-Old-SolsticeTasting notes:
In my dream, a friendly genie emerges from a brass lamp carrying a thyrsus (he’s really into Euripides) and pours out a glass of this wine-dark dram.  The nose is circus peanuts but I mean this literally: peanuts arranged by two siblings into a circus tableau.  Right here is a train of elephants on their haunches, over there a tiger held in place with a chair and whip.  Straw covering a threshing floor.  Half an eggplant hollowed out to make a ship for roasted chestnuts, slathered with demi-glace.  Smoke hangs in the air like a threat of violence.

The mouth is a drying, even zapping, desiccant.  The tang of port echoes like a gong.  Is there perhaps some bourbon barrel aging in there to account for some vanilla, or the caramel apple brine? Before I can find out, the peat smoke steals over me.  Into my palm is pressed smoke-black slivers of charcoal used as wafers at a Satanic communion table.  I get cross at myself for crossing myself.

The finish is a case study in refinement, as if the peat particles were isolated with the help of a particle accelerator and a filter made of the metaphorical veils lifted from the eyes of children.  Earthy but not dirty, like a citizen farmer.  But also high and patrician, like a mid-level Episcopalian functionary.  All of this is to say there is no iodine, bandage, or hashish resin here, just delicious whisky.

  

Rating:

On the scale of facts about jazz musicians who claim to have visited Saturn–

The Benriach 17 Year Old Solstice is Sun Ra–The man made music “rushing forth like a fiery law.”  

  

                                                                      –John
   
   
–Our thanks to Anchor Distilling, Co. for the sample!

 

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