Talisker 20 yo 1981 62%

This one caused a stir and gained a reputation when it was released. Strangely I’ve not been able to find an open bottle till recently. Reckon many are keeping this one for ‘later on’, a sentiment I identify with less as less as the years pass. Ok this is one of the biggest, richest Taliskers released this side of 2000, and the sherry here is not shy about it. Thick, oozing and oily, dark and taut. But even the wood frames it in, almost by force. Aromatic cedar – pillars of it even, and blackwood and creamy oak. Seems like the whole scaffold of it is on fire though, this glorious woodsmoke. Its roots are mired in salty sea mud, black and sucking like pitch in a pit. Black pepper, purple plums reduced on the hob to carbon, teak oil, charred meats on sizzling granite, nodules of salt bursting like sea grapes on the tongue, builder’s tea and graphite oil. Clear echoes, but not the heights, of the 1950s. 92 pts