Bowmore Black 30 Years Old 2nd Edition 50% 1964

Professional reviews

Serge Valentin (91)

alk about a legend! Thanks 1,000 times to ‘La Maison’ for this! Colour: deep mahogany. Nose: extremely bold and rich attack on fruit jams: blackcurrant, strawberry, plum, cherry… Kirsch, wild raspberry spirit… Goes on with dried figs, dates… Then come some ‘funny’ meaty notes (game, grilled bacon) and then some bold Kalhua or Tia Maria (coffee liquor). Some winey notes do then appear, mostly vin de paille (straw wine) or eiswein. So rich! A little peat shines through all these ‘jammy’ notes, and makes the whole a little waxy (wax polish). There’s also some strawberry jam and crystallised orange striking back, and then even some seaweed. It’s incredible that some ‘coastal’ notes still make it through the sherry! Mouth: strong, rich and bold attack, as expected. Even rather balanced at first, with lots of fructose and some medicinal notes, buts it gets quite heavy after a while – some would say a little 'clumsy'...
Definitely not a prima ballerina. Lots of coffee, lots of smoke, lots of pepper, and lots of jam (black plum). It seems to get thicker and thicker, and the balance gets sort of lost, but maybe balance isn’t precisely what one is looking for when tasting a Black Bowmore. Chewier and chewier… Lots of nuts (roasted hazelnuts) and always these heavy jammy notes. Yes, traffic jam on the tongue! As expected, the finish is long and ‘jammy’, the jam managing to sort of annihilate the peat/smoke during the finish and the retro-olfaction. Definitely not the most balanced and complex amongts the splendid Bowmores from the Sixties, but certainly the most spectacular.