As part of the Islay trip we visited Bowmore distillery, unsurprisingly located in the town of Bowmore (pronounced BowMORE). This was on my day as designated driver, and we had no tour booked, but hung around in the bar area where the society bought everyone a dram of the non-age stated (NAS) “No 1” that I will be reviewing together with the core range. The latter, consisting of the Bowmore 12, 15, and 18yo, I bought in 3-dram pack at the distillery for £13. I also bought a dram of Bowmore 25yo Anthology series for a whopping £20, to be reviewed another day. This tasting will be a return-to-origins of sorts, as Bowmore Enigma was the first whisky bottle I ever bought, almost exactly 10 years ago!
I haven’t read up on the expressions I’m sampling today except for the obvious information of age or ABV stated on the label. After this review (i.e. posted below it) I will see what the correspondence between my impressions and Bowmore info / marketing is.
Comparative whisky review
Bowmore original bottlings – 25ml samples collected at the distillery
Bowmore NAS “No 1.” @40% – Official bottling
Bowmore 12yo @40% – Official bottling
Bowmore 15yo @43% – Official bottling
Bowmore 18yo @43% – Official bottling
All can be presumed chill-filtered and with added caramel colouring.
I will start with No 1. Since the sample is so small, I’ll have all of it straight away before proceeding to the next whiskies.
No. 1:
The nose offers very gentle peat, allowing space for fruity notes of banana chips and papaya to shine through, as well as vanilla and milk chocolate; certainly a coastal, sea spray character is there too. Unfortunately there is a distinctive barley note (not of malt but of fresh barley on the malting floor) whose strong presence is rather inelegant, albeit not unpleasant. The mouthfeel is a let down in its thinness; flavours lack intensity; especially shy are the fruits promised by the nose. The flavour grows a few seconds in, when the light peat and soft wood tannins enter the scene and lead the way into an unremarkable finish. A rather lacklustre whisky on the whole, although the nose has its merits.
Now onto the core range.
The 12yo:
There’s honey and toffee. I suspect there might be sherry involved here as I’m picking up some orange and Christmas spices – but it ain’t no bomb. Again, gentle smoke but more presence of a vegetal peat than the No 1. The palate is a lot peatier too, although not heavy by Islay standard. The mouthfeel is not as thin as No 1., but nor is it satisfyingly dense. The taste is a little salty, has some sweetness, but more engagement comes from the bitterness which works well with the peat. I struggle to pick out any very particular flavours, and the overall impression is rather generic to me.
The 15 is darker in colour. To what extent this betrays sherry/wine casks or E150 remains to be discovered…
15yo:
Butter! There is likely much more sherry here. Actually, I’ll be damned if there isn’t some port or wine casks in here too. There’s also a briney note here that was missing in the 12 until just now that I went back looking for it… The texture is denser than the 12; oilier, and also helped by more sweetness, but the latter feels a bit more “sweetened” than naturally sweet, in a sense. The peat is at a comparable level to the 12, but it and the winey flavours stay on for a longer finish. Overall quite nice, if a tad generic.
And for the pièce de résistance, the 18yo:
Well, well, more sherry – who would have thought? I’d venture to guess PX. On the nose, the peat has all but disappeared (but perhaps it’s me becoming fatigued.) For the first time I sense leather and dusty books, as one might expect from this more venerable age statement. There’s some fresher, juicy orange too. Finally, the mouthfeel is convincing: thick and silky. There is a lot more umami to the taste, while the sweetness stays moderate. The flavours arrive immediately, and stay on long enough. It’s got a somewhat generic leather-toffee-peat triad going on that lacks a bit of originality or identity, but I’m asking for too much here. Overall, this whisky delivers a full experience, although not an exceedingly distinctive one.
That’s a wrap, and here are my judgements:
No 1: ✔️/💤
The 12yo: ✔️
The 15yo: 🍷/✔️
The 18yo: ⚖️🍷/ ✔️
Now that I’ve had my samples, let’s see if this poor boy had any luck with his guesses on the casks involved. Here are the official details and tasting notes:
Apparently, “there’s no finer example of a sherry cask finish” than Bowmore 15, whereas the 18yo is “one of the most remarkable, perfectly balanced single malt scotch whiskies of its kind“. Well, I doubt. But they’re nice, for sure.
No mention of casks on the 12yo. Predominantly ex-bourbon, by other sources, but there’s bound to be some other casks in there too. The 15yo is finished in Oloroso sherry casks for three years, no mention of wine casks. The colour in the online picture looks weird, probably indicative of excessive caramel colourant E150 (and photoshop). The 18yo is a marrying of ex-bourbon and ex-sherry casks.
Something many online reviewers seem to agree on is a tropical fruit character, beside the brine and the peat, as typical of Bowmore. Except in No 1., I did not specifically think about tropical fruit; perhaps because I’m too used to Speyside fruit bombs, or maybe my taste is a bit off today, or I’m looking too hard for specific notes (like papaya in No. 1) rather than a non-specific fruity note. On this last note it’s apropos to mention that single casks tend to offer more specific flavours than vattings of huge number of casks which leads to more “generalized” flavours. This makes sense. Suppose we put a “pineapple-y” and “passion fruity” and a “mango-y” cask together. It might be difficult to tease the notes apart after that, and we’re left with a non-specific tropical fruit flavour.
It would be interesting to return to these expression in a year or so. Ironically, a core range tasting pack with 5cl miniatures costs €20 in Germany, quite a bit less than what I paid per ml at the distillery.
DuckDrams 
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