The Cambus 26 Year 1988 from The Exclusive Malts

30 ml individual coffee cake icing bottle

Cambus-26-Year-1988-from-The-Exclusive-MaltsTasting notes:
The Cambus 1988 26 year old has an extraordinary facet—not as extraordinary as the Blue Moon diamond that sold at auction for $48.4 million dollars—but still pretty darn amazing. To wit, it opens with a toasted almond and marshmallow nose, light and delicate, perhaps having been misted an hour ago with a diluted anise spray. Ten minutes after first pouring it into my glass? Still toasted almond and marshmallow, but now perched atop a grilled slice of possibly over-ripe pineapple on a brass etched platter, served by a human-sized catfish wearing a tiny whimsical bowler. The bottom-feeder learned to walk—really: waddle—on his tail, and his whiskers are what holds the platter; the fins are too small and too weak. Behind him comes a mantis shrimp bearing a Sarah Lee™ pecan coffee cake criss-crossed by hallucinatory swirling ribbons of white frosting.

The mouth is shockingly sherried, as if your great-great-aunt emerged from her dusty, musty, fusty attic room with a glass of fino sherry, tripped at the top of the stairs, somersaulted down while the Sherry sprayed all over your piece of coffee cake. Your concern for her health—although maybe you’d forgotten she was up there?—is quickly allayed by the decisive way in which she demands a refill, and takes a bite from your coffee cake! It’s so delicious and delicate you’d likely touch a bunch of doorknobs and subway protuberances and then dab your soon-to-be-pink-eye for the privilege of sucking on a cough drop this succulent. Well, if you won’t, John sure will!

The finish is prickly, but in all the right ways, not in a cactus-like “ouch! that really hurts!” kind of way. It’s also wine-y, again in the right kind of way; sort of like Caymus Special Select’s eccentric second cousin Cambus, visiting from Alloa, Clackmannanshire. It’s all an elongation of the mouth, a delivery for which you are post hoc pleased to have FedEx™ disturb your solitude by the clamorous ringing your doorbell.

 

Rating:
On the scale of things that soared in value when made no more and that are sorely missed–
The Cambus 26 year 1988 from The Exclusive Malts is the original iPod–The original iPod was the backbone of the digital music revolution, just as the Cambus was once the backbone of the Diageo whisky portfolio. A more soothing click*click*click*click*click*click is hard to imagine as your fingers control your destiny…glorious.

 
 

                                                                  –Bill
  


–Our thanks to ImpEx for the sample!

 
 

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