Black Bowmore 30 yo 1964 / 1994 2nd Edition 50%

This and other highly esteemed Black Bowmores have built such a corpus of commentary that it is hard to find any whisky aficionado who hasn’t heard of it. To me this stands as the zenith of an archetype of Bowmore diametrically opposed to Bouquet’s precision and purity. So! A gigantuan sherry here, opening with blasts of cola, amaro, sweet dark chocolate, roasted nuts studded in praline, sticky dry fruit of the purple and black variety sprinkled with cinnamon and anise and dunked in molasses. Not to mention a veritable wall of tannins from dark and oily hardwoods, stained with soot and resins that miraculously doesn’t drown the whisky in wood. Somewhere beneath this mealstrom of richness a heart of fruitiness calls out plaintively but the din is such that one is never sure from whence it comes. This inscrutable amalgamation of fruit and sherry carry the taster onwards and what seals the deal is that it remains completely coherent through palate and finish, never falling apart. Pity the corks used were not the best. 93 pts