The Cragganmore 12 Year Old 2019 Special Release

50 ml all-citrus paintball match refresher mini

Tasting notes:
There’s so much happening on the nose with this dram, it’s crazy. Don’t misunderstand me, though: it’s not a crazy nose. Really, it’s quite gentle, but there is a lot going on here if you pay close attention. There’s bright candy and butterscotch on the open that gives way quickly to the green, green grass of home, just without Tom Jones. Then we got some funk, a brief bout of rubber hose nose: vulcanized plastic bananas for silicon-based apes sitting next to green plastic watering cans. But as we puzzled over this olfactory image, it quickly gave way to hamburger notes, but not just any hamburger: it’s one made from American Wagyu beef and served on a sorghum flour bun generated by a 3D food-grade printer. Yes, our noses are good enough to pick that out. Distinctly.

The mouth is complex enough that it seems it has long been jealous of the nose and has been working hard to keep up. It begins with organic TOMS® Organic shoes, then is herby, grassy, even planty. Ooh! It’s like the shoes are on the grass! [Editor’s note: that note-joke was entirely too lame to get that excited about. We apologize for those three seconds you’ll never get back.] Really, it’s like green water from an incredibly lush swamp. But there’s also notes of a milky substance from a palm tree that’s neither oil nor bitter tears shed for having missed the only human left on the island the last five times it tried to drop a coconut on his head. We also got dragonfly buzzings and weird bird calls on the mouth. Because we’re synaesthetes. There are also lemons colliding with clementines in an all-citrus paintball match. Damn, this is some serious rind-on-rind action, like it was all dialed up on Rindr. Finally, there’s a dialed-down hint of mint on the exhale. Oooh, fresh!

The finish is basically an asparagus-molasses interspecies orgy. [John: Are there species of molasses?] [Bill: Duh: blackstrap!] OK…interstuff orgy? Interfood orgy? Intervegan-ingredient orgy? We’ll edit this later, right? 

A little water makes the finish truly wonderful. It dances. It’s almost like a honeysuckle drunk on cantaloupe juice, only dancier. Can’t do it justice with words, only with partnerless interpretive dance. Stay tuned for The Alvin Ailey Impostor, coming soon.

  

Rating:
On the scale of subtly crazy people–

The Cragganmore 12 Year Old 2019 Special Release is Jonathan Winters-The delivery always belied a lot of fun stuff going on just beneath the surface, and the fun was waiting to see what he allowed out.

   

   

                                                                           —Stephen

   

   

–Our thanks to Diageo for the sample!

 
 

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