The Brora 38 Year 2016 Limited Edition

Tasting notes:
The Brora 38 Diageo release has a majestic nose. By that, I don’t mean it has a Hapsburg nose, or a Roman nose; rather indeed it is as if a giant nose were Shah, or Emperor, or King, or Queen, or Czar, or Angela Merkel. It’s a balsawoodpeatraft on lemonlake under a constellation of lemonmangostars. (Sorry for going James Joyce/e. e. cummings on you, dear Reader, but something about this nose is especially intoxicating.) The raft is being chased by its nemesis, caramelpeachskinkop, who’s chasing it across the lake in a commandeered paddle boat made from aluminum, lily petals, and your grandmother’s tea cozy and mahogany tea chest. You know, the one with the nice brass plate attached with brass screws? Yeah, that one.

The mouthfeel is light and delicate, like Roger Federer effortlessly parrying your best shot and returning it where it’s easy for you to hit—it’s just a charity match, after all. The peat is perfect and suave, as if Tom Hiddleston had played some tails-wearing prince wooing Lady Mary at Downton Abbey by playing the clavichord while singing the opening lieder in Schubert’s Die Schöne Müllerin song cycle.

The finish is glorpious, by which I mean, I wanted to chug it all at once—maybe even an entire bottle at once—going out in a blaze of glory. It evokes a long rest in a lemon-yellow velvet-lined sarcophagus while uttering again and again the name “Snuffleupagus,” while holding as much as possible in my esophagus. In other words, it’s sorta silly, yet deeply profound, as if the veil of reality was being pulled back so that I could see all the bones of the universe.

 
 
Rating:
On the scale of iconic hubs–
The Brora 38 Year 2016 Limited Edition is the Grand Central Station–It’s iconic, it’s the hub of my new universe, it’s grand, it’s central, and I’m currently stationary. More to the point, it should appear in movies, novels, plays, flashmobs, and the memory of all travelers who are lucky enough to pass through it.
 
 
 
 
                                                                      –Bill
 
 
 
–Our thanks to Diageo for the sample!