Whisky Online Blog

I have always liked Bowmore, but as vast swathes of modern Scottish distillates continue to merge in vanilla driven style these days I find myself loving its distinctive taste more and more. I think there is also something to be said for the way it has changed in recent decades, arguably those changes have been greater and more striking than at almost any other distillery. We all know what I’m on about. I’m talking about that surreal charge from the most glorious kind of tropical heaven sent whisky that it was up until around the mid 70s, through the mind boggling, perfume sodden weirdness of the 1980s until finally emerging as the super fresh, pristine, coastal beauty it has become today. Whether or not you like (probably not) that bizarre 80s style of Bowmore, I know I don’t, I think the most important thing is that it is precisely this kind of idiosyncrasy that keeps this one of the most fascinating and compelling distilleries in Scotland today. Certainly the current style of distillate it produces is, for me, one of the best in Scotland, it is clean, fresh, zingy, precise, expressive and provides a wonderful balance of coastal, peat and farmyard characteristics, at its best it can even show glimmers of its old 60s glory. I like to think of its 90s renaissance as something akin to what happened at Springbank, you might even call it the Springbank of Islay. But then again you probably shouldn’t because it’s Bowmore and Bowmore is very much its own distillery, something to be admired in these times of homogenization where distillery character seems to be a dying light in too many glasses.

I got six samples of Bowmore in the post recently that range from the late 80s to the late 90s so we’ll have a wee two parter tasting session in honor of that fact. For the sake of fun I’ve arranged them in chronological order rather than in the usual rising degrees of alcohol structure. First up is a 1987.

This is the most acceptable image you get when Googling 'French Whores'

There has been a puncheon full of ink devoted to the subject of why Bowmore from the 1980s tastes the way it does. Accusations of the whisky smelling like Nocturnal Gallic Businesswomen are not unfounded in my view, although my experience with such matters is mercifully thin. In fact if I ever met a French prostitute I’d probably nervously tell her she smelled like Bowmore. Many theories have been posited as to why this style arose, they range from dodgy yeast strains, new condensers that scolded the spirit, badly run stills, poor wood management, added soap during the distillation and any other number of tinkering changes in the production process. I’m not going to go into too much depth because Dave Broom has already written an excellent and pretty definitive report on this subject for Malt Maniacs. What I find most fascinating however is the fact that Bowmore (or rather it’s parent company Suntory) have been unable to admit that there is actually a problem or that these characteristics even existed at all. They went so far as to threaten libel action against early writers who dared to suggest such things. Well I’m not arfaid to say their 80s output was flawed and tastes like a wrestlers armpit that’s been stuffed to the gunnels with lavender and bath soaps. What are they going to do? Come and get me?

Anyway, the fact that the style began to arise around 1979 and disappears around 1989 is very telling indeed. It was clearly a problem that was hidden within the precursors in the spirit. Precursors being the various chemical compounds, congeners and reactionary elements in the new make that are initially dormant but with time in cask become more and more apparent. Precursors are the essence of distillery character, they are the wax in Clynelish, the citrus in Bladnoch and the apples in Glenfiddich. Likewise they were the perfume in Bowmore. Clearly after 10 years of maturation someone in the labs said ‘hang on a second..’ and necessary adjustments were made to alter these elements in the spirit. These changes can be clearly tasted if you try a run of Bowmores from the late 80s through to the early 90s. Interestingly these notes have been found in various examples of Glen Garioch (and Auchentoshan some have claimed) from the same era but have long since disappeared from these distillates as well. I think what we should take away from this is the fact that Bowmore changed for the better and regardless of the fact it had a dodgy decade, it is now very much ‘on form’. In fact, many of the bottlings now emerging from the early nineties with good age behind them are starting to reach the status of minor masterpieces. Lets hope there’s much much more to come…

Bowmore 1987/2010. 22yo. Douglas Laing ‘Old & Rare’. Sherry Finish. 244 Bottles. 56.1%. 70cl.

Colour: Honey

Nose: Lavender, smoke and caramel at first, it’s not too intense but it is definitely of that 80s era. Very fragrant, floral and soft with odd notes of cheese sticks and cookie dough. These profiles are so weird that they can’t seem to help but be compelling, very masochistic whisky if you ask me. Now some nice notes of juniper and some faint touches of burned acrylic. Lets add some water: with water it becomes much smokier and a little more natural, those intense notes of lavender have died down and it is actually quite pleasant, leafy and fresh. Not bad.

Palate: Neat it is hot and intense with some massive notes of lavender soap, violets and perfume with chocolate, prunes, some fairly clean and pleasant sherry and dates. The soap is not too big but when combined with those lavender, violet and perfume notes it is just too much, like when you walk into a cloud of deodorant spray at the gym or something. More slight cheesiness, chalk, some drying oakiness, beeswax and rotten orange peel. With water: soap city, not good. Actually becoming unpleasant now.

Finish: Hot, prickly, floral and perfumy. A perfume burp?

Comments: I would say this is a good example of this extremely individual and bizarre make. 1980’s Bowmore is clearly not a spirit to everyone’s taste, but I think it should be tasted by everyone, if only for the experience. The difference between this and the make from the preceding and following decades is truly remarkable.

Score: 74/100

A recent but somewhat obscure bottling of 1990 Bowmore that was done for the re-launch of the British East India Company.

Bowmore Somerled 1990-2008. 18yo. 46%. 70cl.

Colour: Straw

Nose: It’s all cream and brine in big lolloping quantities at first, delicate notes of fresh vanilla sit comfortably with drier aspects like flints, salt, cotton wool, minerals, greek yoghurt, There is something of an ‘80s’ quality in here but it is so faint and minor you could be forgiven for thinking you imagined it. The whole is just a delicious and distinctive smelling 1990s Bowmore. Super-fresh, uber-pristine, very coastal and wonderfully expressive. The nose goes on with coal, tar, hints of marmite, hessian, earthy peat, farmyard, engine oil and some tinned peaches. Some intensely fresh notes of mineral, lemon, wet pebble and seashore at the back.

Palate: Slightly stinky at first with vegetal, earthy and farmy aspects but freshens out as you go moving into more coastal and citrusy areas. Almost a glycerol peat, it’s not huge, not as big as the peat tended to get in Bowmore after 93/94 but it is distinctively velvety and oily in the way it manifests here. I think the palate is not as complex as the nose although the flavours are very distinct and well formed, not to mention well balanced. The best thing though is that there is no shortage of distillery character here and it’s a great example of the natural beauty of this great distillery.

Finish: Long, lemony, salty, briny and all kinds of coastal, with a mouthwatering dry edge to it.

Comments: Just another top notch and very classy 1990’s Bowmore. One of the most distinctive makes around these days I think.

Score: 89/100

I stole this from Dewar Rattray's website, I'm sure they won't mind. Interestingly, they are the only IB to offer a comprehensive and detailed online list of their past bottlings, why the hell can't all independents do this?! It would make life so much easier. Hats off to DR for that.

Bowmore 1990/2010 20yo. Dewar Rattray. Cask 272. 204 bottles. Fresh Bourbon. 50.2%. 70cl.

Colour: Chardonnay

Nose: Pin sharp saline coastal notes at first on top of fresh butter, cocoanut and parsley. It’s almost a bit Laphroaigesque but for a tiny hint of (surprise) lavender, but the cask does the loudest talking with notes of pine sawdust and vanilla. A very creamy, quite modern and well composed Bowmore this one, I think the work is ‘textbook’. With a little time it develops some nice notes of fresh lime juice, salt and germoline. With water: Wow, it got much much fruitier, tinned pineapple, a little passion fruit, some banana, it’s very suggestive of old style pre 1976 Bowmore. Some more drying coastal notes like wet pebbles, seashore, seaweed and fresh oysters. Now it starts to become more herbal and medicinal with notes of yellow Chartreuse, Kummel, dried herbs and brine. Wonderful, complex whisky so far.

Palate: At full strength it is very consistent with the nose but there is also a marvelous chewy aged peat character and a whole load of grass, apricots, garden fruits, floral notes, cereals, plums, green tea and preserved lemons. An absolutely fantastic and flavour filled delivery, with a hint of 80s Bowmore floral character but it appears very restrained and balanced with all those other aspects. Juniper, juicy fruits, salt, green peat oils, jasmine tea, coriander, a real Gin like botanical character to this one. I almost hesitate to add water after that but … With water it doesn’t change too much but seems to stretch all those flavours out and soften them all, it feels like a more lazy version of the same whisky.  More notes of green tea, homemade lemonade, green pepper, some gentle floral notes, orange blossom, more salt, still very good but maybe a bit better without water on the palate.

Finish: Long, saline, classy and very elegant. It seems to go full circle on itself and become a bit more ‘modern’ again with the cask giving up more notes of vanilla and cream.

Comments: This is a very entertaining and drinkable whisky, it seems to be ever changing and delivers a multifaceted showcase of all the various historical styles of Bowmore from the past forty years or so. It really is a lot of fun. It’s also one of those curious whiskies that you’ll need to pour two glasses of, one to nose and one to drink, the nose is better diluted but the palate is better neat. Anyway, it’s another great 1990 Bowmore, well done to Dewar Rattray for bottling this one.

Score: 90/100

Next time we’ll delve deeper into the latter nineties…

If you’re reading this somewhat obscure blog then the chances are you are in the upper echelons of the whisky nerderati and therefore Lochside probably needs little by way of introduction. Anyone who has ever tasted some of the stunning old casks from the sixties, the ones laden with dense and complex fruit characters, like Bowmore of a similar provenance minus the peat, will know how great this distillery could be. Even the grain whisky produced at Lochside through a coffee still until the early seventies could be a surprisingly fruity affair. It was the only distillery other than Ben Nevis to produce a ‘single blend’, a mix of malt and grain spirit blended at birth and matured as one spirit. The 1964 Lochside single blend is a fantastic example of how well this technique worked, a shame that no one ever pursued it further. Anyway, today we’ll celebrate the lost glory of Lochside with an expression distilled in 1981.

Lochside 1981-2010. Speciality Drinks. Oloroso Sherry. 57.5%. 70cl.

Colour: Light Mahogany

Nose: It’s not quite the fruit bomb that you might usually expect from a Lochside but rather more elegant and poised with some very dry, clean and aromatic sherry influence on top with the lush fruit coming through very quietly underneath. With time that fruitiness starts to get louder and clearer with lots of very precise green fruitiness wrapped around some very sharp spiciness. Some old style highland waxiness is in there as well with notes of green peppercorns in brine and a slight faded smokiness. Lovely structure and balance so far on the nose, exemplary consistency between wood and spirit. With water: the fruit becomes yet more naked with notes of mint, hessian, lamp oil and ripe strawberries.

Palate: Immediately very lush with massive notes of pink grapefruit, lemon oils, white fruits, flowers, truffles, guava, greengage and lychee all kicking about along with a little Rieslingesque mineral/petrol quality. Great poise and control, all the flavours are very taught, intense and direct, I love this styles of whisky. Water loosens everything up a bit and makes it more of a lush, oily mishmash of flavour. The spice comes back with a vengeance along with some green notes of sap, resin and minerals, also a bit more wood begins to come through with bigger dried fruit from the sherry.

Finish: Long and vibrant with plenty green and tropical fruits and more of those spicy kicks.

Comments: An exemplary Lochside in terms of sheer quality but also quite interesting to get a more sherried angle on the make. A great bottling, not quite at 90 points for me but still an immensely impressive dram. Lets hope there are more casks of this kind of Lochside still out there.

Score: 89/100

Glengoyne, "untainted by humility or common-sense."

I like Glengoyne, it’s one of those spirits that seems to age to fruit laced perfection between 28-38 years while younger expressions often display a spicy, flavoursome verve. In short: frequently delicious, often complex, always entertaining whisky. However, for me there is one nigglesome thing about Glengoyne that is written on every bloody bottle and that is the self-aggrandising slogan “untainted by the harshness of peat smoke”. Now I am not a peat-freak, I’ve tried to cultivate a healthy appreciation for all styles of whisky/key, so it really pisses me off when I see this kind of snobbishness lofted around by the distillery owners themselves (surely snobbery is our department?). It’s not all that common thankfully, most whiskies are refreshingly modest in their packaging, but just occasionally this sort of gushing, nonsensical crap can squeeze through and Glengoyne have long been one of the worst offenders. Here is an example from the blurb that is printed on the back of the seventeen year old bottling:

“Unlike most other single malt whiskies, Glengoyne has traditionally dried its malted barley using only warm air. This ensures that there is no overwhelming peat smoke in the finished malt. The result is a subtle, complex and generally more satisfying whisky is which all of the delicate flavours are fully expressed.”

Indulge me for a moment while I analyze a few tidbits from this blurbery. First up is the use of the word ‘traditionally’. I think you’ll find Mr Glengoyne that ‘traditionally’, ie over 100 years ago for arguments sake, almost all barley would have been dried with some kind of peat, wood or coal, thus deriving some phenolic traces from the resulting smoke and fumes. If you are fortunate enough to taste any whisky produced before WW2 you’ll be hard pressed to find anything without obvious traces of peat. Completely air dried barley is a more modern phenomena. Secondly, the “generally more satisfying” comment, or massive sweeping generalisation to be more precise. Surely this is entirely down to mood and taste? If on a gentle summers evening with friends I am offered a Glengoyne as an aperitif before dinner I’m sure it would capture the essence of the moment like few other malts could. However if I arrive at a warm fireplace in a welcoming bar in the dead of winter after trekking twelve miles through a soul-shredding, sub-zero blizzard, covered in the frozen blood of the wounded deer to which I had to administer a mercy killing, things will be somewhat different. In those circumstances my first thoughts are not “Man I really fancy something delicately floral with a wealth of subtle malty complexities.” No, I want something with enough peat to turn my ear wax flammable and cause tufts of sphagnum moss to start sprouting through my beard!

Peat, sometimes there's no such thing as too much.

Now as fantastic as some Glengoyne bottlings are I think they need to be taken down a peg or two with this whole peat malarkey. So here is a list of peated whiskies that I think almost all serious whisky lovers would probably rate higher in terms of quality and complexity than almost all Glengoynes. Ever. So there!

Endless Ardbeg bottlings distilled before 1977.

A plethora of Legendary Laphroaigs from pre 1978.

Countless Bowmores distilled pre 1974

Almost all Broras from before the mid seventies.

Several legendary Port Ellens

Many of the Longrow bottlings from 1973/1974

Some phenomenal casks of Glen Garioch from the late sixties/early seventies.

Almost any old Lagavulin 12yo white label.

Many fantastic old bottlings of Talisker.

Not to mention some stunning expressions of Highland Park, 1972 Ledaig, Ardmore and Caol Ila that benefit enormously from varying degrees of peat.

Obviously that is a very personal list but it is also a list that covers many of the most desirable and expensive bottlings in the world, bottlings that have become so for a very good reason. I’ll wager a single bottle of Laphroaig 10yo from the fifties would be worth more to most people than almost any Glengoyne you could think of. This is because maybe there is something about the greatest examples of peated whisky, the way they manage to retain all the subtleties of malt and fruit but with so much more, something that truly hooks peoples hearts and minds. I feel a bit bad after all that, I’m being a little unfair to Glengoyne, please remember I love the whisky, I just hate the anti peat comments. Glengoyne isn’t untainted by peat smoke, it’s just unpeated, in the same way that Lagavulin is not ‘enhanced by peat smoke’. While I wouldn’t like to see Glengoyne’s character change, I also wouldn’t like to see every other distillery making unpeated spirit as well. Variety is the spice of life and Glengoyne’s patter reads like some kind of warped whisky racism.

Glengoyne 40yo, good whisky but if only it had a little more peat. (just kidding)

I think having ranted about poor Glengoyne for so long it’s now time to redress the balance and say something much more positive about their great whisky. I tried the new(ish) 40yo in London recently and loved it but I’ve only just gotten round to writing notes for it.

Glengoyne 40yo. OB. 1968-2009. Single sherry butt. 250 bottles. 45.9%. 70cl.

Colour: Old Tokaji

Nose: High polished antique sherry with lots of bubbly fruits underneath and some remarkably fresh notes of crisp green apples and fresh limes. Hints of honeysuckle, toffee, wild flowers, cereal and butterscotch. This is really typical of these great old Glengoynes and their uber fruit style. Now there are notes of beeswax, marzipan, pear liqueur, old books, sultanas, many fruit syrups and cordials with a really gentle custardy/vanilla undertone. Lovely complexity to the nose, lets see if the palate can keep up…

Palate: Big, round, fruity and intensely concentrated, massive notes of orange liqueur, seville orange marmalade, milk chocolate, pine resin, menthol, tobacco leaf and more orange rind. This is really orangey whisky, the futures bright for Glengoyne (sorry!). Now comes greengages, more sultanas and raisins, kumquats, lychee and mulling spices. Hints of wood, spice and hessian follow with a lovely drying tinge at the end.

Finish: Long and filled with all the same fruity complexity and resinous, mouth-coating glee.

Comments: Great old whisky, we’ll forget the price for now but it is fantastic old Glengoyne with all the distillery’s trademark complexity and fruit. Considering what the 17yo has to say about the evils of peat I wonder if as you go up the Glengoyne range the older and more expensive the whiskies become the more vicious the denouncements of peat become. So on the 21yo it states “None of that brown boggy shit in this whisky” and next year’s 40yo will simply state “FUCK ALL PEAT!!!!! WORSHIP THE GOD OF NAKED MALT!!!!” Or something along those lines anyway. The Glengoyne marketing guys can have that idea for free. All I ask in return is a case of Laphroaig. And £1 million.

Score: 92/100