The Glentauchers 18 Year 1996 from Duncan Taylor

Tasting notes:
I’m in the top-most compartment of a really tall windmill.  I sneer down at Don Q. and his squire as the latter prepares the former for battle.  Around them, alpine flowers are gently watered by cornet spit-valves.  A young castrato pierces the air with sounds so arresting that the songbirds fall silent.   Such is the setting for this resplendent nose: light lemon meringues, sunbeam-toasted and ready to eat; almond nut paste; and sweet tart powder dusted over a broken promise.

The mouth is really unexpected.  Rye molasses infused with train-engine steam.    Then anise emerges, but it’s softened like it has been polished and rounded with 30 grit peppermint candy sand paper disks.  “Really pretty, really pretty,” I repeat to myself over and over like a parrot that spent a week keeping company with Colonel Kurtz, long before things went south.

The finish is another revelation.  The malty-fruity mouth continues to reverberate in its paradoxes.  I find a meadow of tiny pine saplings, all bent down in simulation of Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree.  Or is it worship of a great coniferous deity?  Then over my shoulder I spy a futuristic bounty hunter vaping stonefruit-flavored tobacco from a blue cobalt tipped e-cigarette.  Must not let him see me seeing him, I think to myself.
 
 
Rating:
On the scale of video game adaptations of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness–
The Glentauchers 18 Year 1996 from Duncan Taylor is Spec Ops: The Line–At first you think it’s a standard third-person shooter with a search-and-rescue mission.  But then you’re confronted with the moral complexities of war, the blurred lines between good and evil, and all of it symbolized by the threat of sand storms and hallucinations.

 
 
 
                                                                      –John