Bowmore 1989 Port Cask Matured 23-Year
50.8% ABV - Islay, Scotland
Nose: Wafting fruit-punch sweetness, with underlayment of wine, cooked cherry-orange pie, spices, smoky wet dunnage warehouses and roasted coffee. It’s a bit slow to come together, but worth the wait.
Taste: Grapeskins, plum-cherry, and cooked fruits all mixing together. Toasted wood with dried apricot leading into the finish.
Finish: Clean puffs of smokes and drying oak atop dried fruits and floral notes.
As I am staring at the bottle in front of me, one thing that I can’t stop noticing is that this was bottled and released in 2013! I still see so many stores that have it available, and I think that is fairly rare for any bottle of "Limited Release" whisky to be collecting dust for that long. (Possible the only other bottle I’ve noticed that for is a 2015 release of Midleton Very Rare…)
Back when my wife and I were dating she bought me a dram of this for my birthday—well, she essentially gave me a coupon to buy a dram (and enjoy in her company), and that was redeemed many months later. The point being: what a gift! (Maybe it was then that I realized that she was a keep, right?)
So it was then, back in 2017, that I developed an appreciation for… how else do I put it—expensive Bowore? Long story short, I must have developed an emotional connection to the whisky and the Bowmore 1989 Port Cask Matured 23-Year ended up being one of the first ahem expensive bottles that I purchased. I bought it to celebrate… and to be truthful, I can’t remember what event I opened it for! That’s all right. I’m sure it was a good reason to open then, and it’s a great reason to pour another today on a Whisky Wednesday. (Ah, well first I tried scrolling the photos in my phone but I couldn’t find any hints… then I remembered I have a master whisky spreadsheet. I opened that up and it was my birthday two years ago that I first opened it! I’ve only had about ⅓ since then.)
To tell you something about the actual whisky and its taste and flavours, it’s definitely not as complex and dark fruited that I would want from a Port cask, nor is it as floral and lavendary as I’d want an aged Bowmore to be. Nevertheless, it is a great whisky and really only suffers from an unfortunate price point—putting this into a category of "isn’t great value, but is great whisky."
Details: Distilled 1989, Bottled 2013. Non-chill filtered.
Tasting Notes (Official): A delicious feast of smoke-infused blood orange, winter spices, black truffles and walnut oil.
A whisky to warm the coldest Islay night, this limited edition Bowmore Single Malt has been matured exclusively in port casks for 23 years, giving it a deliciously dark colour and remarkably rich flavour.
Tasted 8 November 2023. (Posted 5 February 2024.)
