Bowmore 18 Trader Joe's Tasting Notes and Ratings.

Bowmore 18 Trader Joe's

Added on Thursday, Jul 1, 2010 at 08:38 PM

Bottler:

Alexander Murray & Co.

Age:	18 yrs	Type:	Scotch
Vintage:	N/A	Subtype:	Single Malt
ABV:	40.00 %	Region:	Islay
Price:	$40	Availability:	Wide

Member Ratings and Notes

Sku

Nose: Peat, grape juice, furniture polish, paint.

Palate: Horrifyingly perfumy with a slight wisp of smoke. The smoke disappears but the cheap perfume (I'm too polite to use the acronym) lingers. Some smoke returns to the finish but is again overwhelmed by perfume. Not much to recommend this which seems to come from the rather questionable era of heavily perfumed Bowmore.

Adam

Nose is a nice peaty earthy thing, with very dusty old floor and slight… tile cleaner?

The palate is exactly what the nose said it would be, plus floral stuff. I can even taste the dust, it's lingering in my mouth. This is a weird one, but it's got that perverse enjoyability that many peated whiskies can have, and that Bowmore is sometimes known for...

Except, damn it, after a short while it gets rather disagreeable. Passes the sip test pretty well, not the glass test. Not terribly bad, just approaching hard to drink -- the aforementioned flavors all combine and stick around in my mouth in a way that I wish wasn't in a whisky from one of my favorite distilleries.

Tim

N: The storied FWP. The name says it all. Overly perfumey, estery, floral beyond belief, nosing ever closer to being a vaguely soapy on the tail end of the nose.

P: Super sweet. Sugary. The perfume permeates everything. Violets. A little ethanol.

F: The rare occasion where a shorter finish would be better. Perfume, violet, some maltiness.

This was not good. If you close your eyes and just imagine you're at Sapphire, you can elevate this to marginal drinkability, without the reality of body glitter clinging to you.

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