Birthday Booze: Peat's Beast 34 year old 1985 (Bowmore)

Yes, I am including one '80s Bowmore among my Birthday Booze, because what the hell. Though I am a bit startled by the new generation of whisky fans who unironically find perfumed soap and artificial violet notes as features, not bugs, of the whisky production process. (Yes, and Troll 2 is peak cinema.) Or are the newest moneyed whisky drinkers unable to discern when old and/or expensive whiskies are crapola?

I don't know. But indie bottler Fox Fitzgerald thought it wise to finish a half dozen or more '80s Bowmore casks in Cognac-seasoned vessels. Maybe this is just crazy enough to work. At some point in the past, I thought it was a good idea to engage in a bottle split of this whisky. For science.

Distillery: Bowmore
Owner: Beam Suntory
Region: Islay
Independent Bottler: Fox Fitzgerald

Range: Peat's Beast
Age: 34 years old (1985 - 2020)
Maturation: ?????, then Cognac casks
Outturn: 1800 bottles
Alcohol by Volume: 47.1%
(from a bottle split)

NOTES

The nose is unique and......kinda great. First, wrap flower kiss candy in maple candy, then smoke it. Then do the same with seaweed-wrapped sour apple candy. And how about a slice of cinnamon cake next to a blob of pine sap and a few band-aids, in a fish market.

On the other hand, the palate. Burnt hay, burnt moss, burnt Crème de Violette, burnt floral soap. Now I'm sipping shampoo with a flower kiss candy chaser. Some curiously clean peat smoke floats up from the background.

Lemons, black pepper, Crème de Violette, shampoo, and burnt hay finishes it off.

WORDS WORDS WORDS

Yes, we all have our kinks. You like to pay $400+ to drink violet shampoo. I like Jess Franco films. I also love this whisky's nose, fashioned by the insane idea of bringing cognac into the mix, and it keeps me from failing the entire thing. This is it for my '80s Bowmore samples, but it's not the only possibly-soapy sample in the stash. For my next review...

Availability - Maybe the primary market, probably the secondary
Pricing - ???
Rating - 71