No, I haven’t already rolled back my commitment to slow the pace of my whisky reviewing and to restrict it only to bottles that have lain unopened for years in my stash. It’s only that I still have a few samples left over from before I left for Bombay in early January and I may as well get through all of them as well. And so here’s a Bowmore 15. This was distilled in 1992 and bottled in 2007 from a refill hogshead by Douglas Laing in their Old Malt Cask series.  Back when this came out a lot of whisky geeks were still very wary about Bowmores distilled in the early 1990s. This was on account of the proximity to the long problematic preceding decade at the distillery. As I’ve noted before on the blog, my random sampling suggests that by the early 1990s most of those problems had been worked out. Indeed, I’ve had quite a few rather nice indie Bowmores distilled in the early 1990s. That’s not to say, of course, that there aren’t casks from that period that still bore/bear traces of the major problems of the distillate in the 1980s, particularly a strong soapy note. Let’s hope this cask is not one of those. When teenaged bourbon cask Bowmore is good it’s very good indeed, with that unique mix of smoke, fruit, florals and coastal notes. Let’s see where this one falls on the spectrum. Continue reading →

Today is the ninth anniversary of my blog’s launch. I had no particular thoughts then—that I can remember at any rate—of how long I’d keep it going but nine years seems quite long. When Sku signed off from his blog after it turned 10 I’d thought I might one-up him and end mine when it turned nine. But don’t get your hopes up: I’m not going to. I don’t know how many more years I’ll keep at it but for now I’m still enjoying blogging—especially with the dual food and whisky focus, and the occasional foray into other things. I know that I’ve lost many of my original whisky readers with the diluted focus on whisky after the first couple of years. I do very much appreciate those of you who’ve stuck with the blog no matter when you happened on it, whether whisky or food is your prime interest. I’ve never been a volume reviewer of whisky—in the first year or so I posted a whisky review every day but I couldn’t keep that up very long. It’s been three reviews a week for a long time now and it’ll stay that way. My practice of only reviewing what I choose to drink and not accepting commercial samples will also continue. And my reviews of restaurant meals—in the Twin Cities metro and beyond—will also continue to be independent and will doubtless continue to win me more friends online as my recent review of Owamni did on Facebook; I’m glad to have at least a few blog readers who find those reviews of value (whether you agree or disagree). To those who cook from the recipes I post I feel perhaps the greatest gratitude—for in a sense letting me into your kitchen and making some of what we eat part of your own and your family’s repertoires.

But enough cloying sentiment! It’s been a tradition for every blog anniversary to be marked with a Bowmore review—as my first review happened to be of a lowly Bowmore—and so it will be this year as well. Continue reading →