The BenRiach 1997-2014 Gordon & MacPhail “the wood makes the whisky”

Tasting notes:
Imagine that you open a box of sherry-soaked velour Q-tips and you’ve got a raging case of swimmer’s ear.  That, my friends, is the best way I can represent my excitement upon nosing this delightful dram.  I get a drier sheet used to perfectly stifle a sneeze during a sermon.  Then some musty, summer cottage notes emerge.  Finally, I see lemons rolling over and over and at the end of the grocery store conveyor belt, waiting to be scanned.

The mouth is, in a word, peculiar.  I imagine the peat is taken from shallow, sub-Saharan peat bogs.  After all, there’s a sharp note at the beginning that fires quickly, followed by cooling and creamy Limoncello icicles.  The peat is really unlike anything I’ve tried.  Imagine a hangman puzzle that never terminates because the limbs are not attached at the joints.  I’m going to have to employ a new alphabet if I have any hope of plumbing the depths of this mystery.

The finish is a smooth and rewarding as the complete cessation of my swimmer’s ear.  What we’ve got here is a nice wintertime dram.  Think of it as a liquefied Yule log, or the perfect companion for nighttime sleigh rides.  I would walk a long way on a cold night after drinking this.  (Bill interrupts to say that he’d stay indoors to finish the bottle while I was out.  Readers: you should know that he would do precisely that.  You could trust him with your money; your most awful secrets he’ll never tell; and he’d vouchsafe your reputation even at cost to his own.  But for all of these virtues, this bottle would be rinsed out and bone dry in the time it takes me to return from the mailbox at the end of my driveway.)
 
 

 
 
 
Our thanks to Gordon & MacPhail for the sample!