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History In A Bottle Day 18: Old Malt Cask Bowmore 21 Year KWM Cask

Posted on December 19, 2022

This post is Bonus Content. It has information on one of the KWM Cask bottles that are featured on the back of our 2022 KWM Whisky Calendar box. You can find the blog post for the mini bottle for Day 18 of our 2022 KWM Whisky Calendar here.

by Andrew

Bowmore was my first love when it comes to Scotch whisky, and as long as we have been bottling single casks, I wanted to bottle a cask of Bowmore. The distillery doesn’t sell casks, so that left independent bottlers as the only option. I had high hopes for a parcel of casks samples from an independent bottler owned by a Morrison… there is more than 1, and I won’t say which one. But you’d think, given the family owned the distillery before selling it to Suntory (Morrison Bowmore Distillers), that surely, they would have some good casks… if they did, they weren’t sharing them with us. I tried for years to find a cask of Bowmore to put our name on and failed, until we finally got a sample from Hunter Laing that had our name on it!

In 1997, for our 25th Anniversary, we bottled a cask of 21-Year-old Bowmore distilled in 1996. It was not the sherried style of Bowmore that I was hunting early in my career, but rather the most subtle and tropical style I favour now. A whisky that is not overrun by the cask, but rather complimented by it. A vessel to add character and allow for oxidation. In a perfect world I would have loved for this to be bottled at cask strength, but it drank well at 50%, and the price was great at $200.

Funny story about the day the whisky first arrived at KWM. It was the fall of 2017, and Jim McEwan who was still with Bruichladdich was in town. He had been the distillery manager at Bowmore when the whisky was made and said he might have filled the cask himself… A coincidence too perfect to ignore, he was more than happy to sign the first 90 or so bottles to arrive in store!

Old Malt Cask Bowmore 21 Year KWM Cask

Andrew's Tasting Note

Nose: creamy, floral and sweet; a touch of Parma Violets (sweet lavender candies) clotted cream, Crème Brule and salted caramel ice-cream; light-savoury-smoke, lemon and pear drops, vanilla bean Jelly Bellies and wine gums. 

Palate: creamy, buttery, oily and fruity; silky layers of honey and vanilla are rolled out with lots of soft fruits: guava, Midori melon, green banana and lots of citrus; more wine gums; the smoke is delicate, floral and decadent, with more lavender and peppermint; the clotted cream carries through on a dry British scone; more ice-cream too: a double scoop of salted caramel and Earl Grey tea.

Finish: long, silky and creamy with layers of fruit, floral tones, elegant smoke and gentle toasted oak. Comment: this was worth the wait; a beautiful malt; my kind of Bowmore!

This entry was posted in Whisky, KWM Whisky Calendar 2022, KWM Single Cask

 

 

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