Bowmore 35 yo 1968 / 2003 Duncan Taylor #1426 vs Bowmore 40 yo 1968 / 2008 Duncan Taylor #3824 42.3%
And with this post, I will begin transitioning posts to Instagram, under the handle ‘whiskyrific’. Thank you all who have checked back on this blog through facebook now and then. So posts will appear here and in Instagram but no longer on facebook.
This is a big change (for me) and it does mean the demise of my beloved sliding scale, which has inspired more animated conversations with friends than I had ever dreamed possible.
There is the problem of old posts and the fact of the transient nature of Instagram being at odds with a referencing repository. I do have a few suggestions I am kicking about but most involve regularly copying over old posts over time. And to prove that what is old may yet be fresh and relevant….
Bowmore 35 yo 1968 / 2003 Duncan Taylor #1426 41.7%
Magical 60s. Ripe mango, passionfruit, blood oranges, red berries, all at their deepest, ripest and juiciest. The fruitiness is exquisite, and such a joy. Also hot white ceramic plates, hot chalk, flashes of chlorophyll and dried out lime zest. But perhaps the fruit has displaced the phenols somewhat, with only the thinnest wisps of smoke apparent. On the tongue though the phenols do awaken with lit cigars, a deep crystalline peat, lots of flinty and resinous notes. Herbaceous bark sits aside an insistent fruitiness remarkably well. Also rock salt, seaspray, crystallised orange peel. Really, a meltingly beautiful profile. 91 pts
Bowmore 40 yo 1968 / 2008 Duncan Taylor #3824 42.3%
So very similar. Exuberantly fruity and juicy in the most drippingly ripe way. This one seems to stoop a little lower being laden with dewy-moist stalks, spearmint and green tea powder. Again the wood is muted and so are the phenols except wisps of white smoke. And once again it is on the palate that the phenols awaken, not in a fury mind you its 40 years old but with the grizzled charm of an old storyteller on his best day. Glowing embers and a sharp blade of peat. More phenols than fruit to this story it seems. Earthen dust full of roots and chipped granite, and salty rocks buffeted by seaspray. Smoke on the wind, the sea up the nose and a smile on my lips. So very beautiful you are, old Bowmore. 90 pts.
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whiskyrific 
Those two both sound absolutely stunning!
Wonderful years at Bowmore!