Bowmore 15yo Darkest 43%

Distillery bottlings of younger Bowmore and to be honest younger Bowmore in general have been given a hard time from "people" in the so called know! French Whoores Perfume FWP and all that. And I have to admit at times I have fallen into this trap myself on a few occassions and have probably stayed clear of distillery bottlings for too long. Bar the old stuff which is incredibly good! That said some of the IB bottlings from the early 90's onwards have also been stunning.

Anyway I was given the Bowmore 15yo Darkest blind and I thought it was bloody good. That said it was at the end of a boozy meal so I thought I would try it again in a more controlled environment. Here goes!

Nose: Sweet, smoked Bavarian cheese, brown sugar and syrup. touch of smoked eel! Dry hay and crab meat.

Taste: Soft oranges, soft peat. Very sweet. marmalade, butterscotch angel delight.

Finish: Lightly smoke and a little dry granite. A little bit chewy and touch of grapefruits.

Score: 86/100

Comment: A decent enough dram perhaps not as good as I remembered it. I will quite happily drink this - probably quite a lot of it - but if this had been at 46% or at cask strength this could have been a belter!

Glenfiddich Snow Pheonix

Glenfiddich are showing that there is not a trick to be missed when it comes to creating a new bottling. There new Snow Pheonix is only available to members of the Glenfiddich explores club and as there was only 1000 bottles available then it is likely to sell out very quickly. I had actually joked with people that there will be an official bottling to commemorate the big sna' of 2009 but I never thought that it would be Glenfiddich. I suppose fair play to them and they are donating money to the Cairngorm Mountain Rescue team so it has to be a good thing!

One thing I will say it is much more limited than the Don Ramsey bottling they did a few years ago which was limited to something crazy like 274 casks!