The Dailuaine 34 Year 2015 Limited Edition

Tasting notes:
Just who is Dailuaine, you ask? I say it’s Bruce Wayne’s unknown half-brother, who scampers around Gotham in the costume of a different, echo-locating superhero. By day he vapes lustily through an oboe, fusses with a poorly-sized monocle, and likes to correct other people by suggesting that they modify their stories with a “presumably.” By night, however, Dailuaine noses like lemon soap in a Turkish bath. He eases into a caramel wave pool set to nearly 120-degrees and exhales notes of strawberry taffy in the crook of a rubber tree, green peppers, and 1000 origami cranes made from sheets of synthetic nori.

The mouth, as you’d expect from such a complex character, is delightful. I’m struck by lavender xylophone mallets. There are soft notes of heather, velvet, and late winter’s first blooming Eranthis. I’m sitting inside Dailuaine’s smoky oboe reed like the world’s smallest and most elongated ashram. My meditation topic is the derring-do of St. Jerker Bjorkstrom who, in the ninth century, rid Greenland of all of its snakes, as well as all of the birds of paradise, which is why we find neither of them there today, presumably.

The finish is as even, bright, and long-penetrating as a beam from a lighthouse racing across a quieted bay on a moonless night. There’s delicacy on the finish; it resides squarely in the plant kingdom. I find myself staring through colorblind eyes at the most intricate painting by an artist who calls himself the Van Gogh of monochromaticism. Intricacy and complexity merge finally into complicity. But that’s okay. I’ve already surrendered, presumably.

Rating:

 
 
 
–Our thanks to Diageo for the sample!