Tasting notes:
This opens up with notes of burned bacon and taffeta from a post-prom bonfire brunch that went, in the memorable patois of Chad, “oogie.”  We also find honey from killer bees, the key element in an aggressive syrup for the uneaten waffles now cooling on earthenware plates.  Singed pine needle incense tickles the nose and invites a closer look.

On the mouth we get a sluiceful of machine oil and heavy water used to rinse out a collectible transistor radio tuned to Pavarotti’s performance of “Nessun dorma.”  Roasted lemon rinds used for scrawling lurid cave images haunt the epiglottis.   

The finish carries forward the wonderment of dawn, in the literal sense of a dawning recognition.  Here it is of an elk burger: charred on the outside, rare on the inside, and wrapped securely–like a child’s candy money gripped by a small fist–inside a well-toasted brioche bun.  

The finish returns us to the lemons on the nose, but this time as gemlike lemon drops chiseled into Johnson solids by magical mathematical elves. They are using banana hammers to make the fine facets. We are impressed by their ingenuity, and resolve to fill our glasses again.

Rating:
On the scale of interesting facts about Puccini–

The Octomore 13.2 is the fact that his full name is Giacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini–We’re here to tell you that this fine dram is secondo to none.

                                                                                      —John

Tasting notes:
On the nose, we find freshly cut lemon wedges smeared with pomegranate butter. But that’s not all. We find grapefruit-encrusted daisy petals, and cinnamon toast sprinkled with lava ash and alstroemeria. Above all the fruity and the floral are wrapped together like a caduceus in which the understudies–in this case, a stoat and a mongoose–got star billing.

The mouth is creamy and satisfying, but still feisty. Think of a pesto turned almost white with the addition of mascarpone cheese; there’s liveliness and brio, but also smooth silkiness. As we reflect further, we see again the interplay of fruit and floral dimensions in a happy complexity. [Bill: “But the demoted caduceus snakes–are they happy? Stephen: “How does this have any bearing on the whiskey?”]

The finish returns us to the lemons on the nose, but this time as gemlike lemon drops chiseled into Johnson solids by magical mathematical elves. They are using banana hammers to make the fine facets. We are impressed by their ingenuity, and resolve to fill our glasses again.

Rating:
On the scale of Christmas tree descriptions given nearly 200 years ago by the York, Pennsylvania, Society of Bachelors—

The Limavady Single Barrel Single Malt Irish Whiskey is “superb, superfine, superfrostical, [and] shnockagastical.”–The Society of Bachelor’s say also that their Christmas trees “cannot fail to gratify taste,” and we found that to be precisely the case with Limavady’s delightful entry into the single malt category.  

                                                                                      —John

–Our thanks to Limavady for the sample!

Tasting notes:
The GlenWyvis 2018-21 Member’s Release Batch 1 at 50% abv, is a hard dram to come by! In 2016, by the Ben Wyvis mountain in Dingwall (all of which, I admit, sounds like somewhere out of The Rings of Power), the first community-owned distillery opened its doors. Stephen, via threats, blackmail, and <deleted*>, managed to obtain a bottle of the first release of GlenWyvis, which was made available only to the 3,000 shareholders. Since it’s Stephen who’s looking at gaol time, I pronounce it a worthy sacrifice!

* The Malt Impostor barristers on retainer forbid us from talking about what else he did to get a GlenWyvis First Batch.

The GlenWyvis First Batch, Members Only, 2018-21, 50% abv, nose opens with subtle floral notes that blossom into a white-pepper spiced pear-and-peach salad served in flagrante delicto.

[John: Does Bill know what that means?]

[Stephen: I don’t think so.]

There’s the spiraling sweetness of Moscatel on the nose, which isn’t surprising, given that it 15% of this release was aged in first-fill Moscatel casks. We got also ripe honeydew melon and unripe honeydew rinds, the latter nosing better than the descriptor would suggest. We also found Braeburn apples left out in the sun long enough that wasps buzzed by wondering if there were any country clubs nearby.

The mouth is as lively as babbling child by a burbling brook, whose blubbering brother is wailing while bobbing for apples—it’s that lively. (Note: The proximity of “blubber” to “wail” is intentional! If I were James Joyce, this review would be acclaimed as a work of nuanced genius.) There’s faint wine and a hint of cough syrup run through an otherwise-unused coffee filter. One gets the sense of relief that while perhaps a grand piano is falling towards you as you stand on a sidewalk that at least it’s not a few crates filled with anvils inexorably heading your way. Which is to say: You feel gravity, gratitude, and the sense of a well-tempered clavier cleaving your clavicle, but sparing your ossicles, including the anvil, missing them by incus I mean, inches. (More Joycean wordplay!) Which is to say: It’s surprisingly tasty for a 3 year-old whisky!

The finish comes on like Weekend at Bernie’s: a non-zombie dead man fools the living. In this case, white pepper changes to black, Members Only jackets are non-ironically popular again, a future rife with possibilities beckons with your imagined come-hither smoldering gaze and wave of your dream love ideal. There’s a bit of moldy lime mixed in with coconut, making the spine of an oddly entrancing daiquiri. 

Rating:
On the scale of preternaturally appropriate blues songs–

The GlenWyvis 2018-2021 Member’s Release First Batch is the Bobby Blue Bland (and the Bobby Blue Bland Blue’s Band) song Members Only–Welcome to the club, GlenWyvis! We’re pleased to taint  anoint you with the Official Malt Impostor Seal of Approval and we’re excited to sample more of your releases!

                                                                                      —Bill

–Our great thanks to Liam for the bottle!

Tasting notes:
On the nose, this 14 Year Old Dailuaine from Adelphi presents with notes of anise flan and copper gutters after a spring rain, but not together, because anise flan in a copper gutter after a spring rain is simply too improbable. It’s also simultaneously fudge-y and floral, like someone bred tonka beans and vanilla beans, then used the resulting franken-bean with perfumed rose petals to make a penuche fudge–and then served it in a dish from your grandmother’s powder room. At first, John misheard “penuche” as “Belushi” and followed up with the obvious question: “John or Jim?” This nose would be John, slicing the fudge cleanly with a ninja sword.

The mouth effervesces effortlessly in a way that recalled the ionized air of the nose. We were happy to find a little mank on the mouth as well: gave it a meatiness, a chewiness that adds substantially to the experience. Add a little water, and some brine surges forward to assert itself.

We got to the finish and found it still hot, still effervescent, not unlike Lisa Kudrow. We also found notes from the twilight stage of apple juice as it ferments into pre-cider. John got a bit of turpentine on the finish, but then again, he heard “penuche” as “Belushi,” so take that for what you will. Overall, though, the finish is chewy, like a chicle twig. You guys are getting that, too, right?

Rating:
On the scale of gutter solutions–

The Dailuaine Adelphi Selection 14 Year Old (54.1%) is mesh gutter covers–To be clear, we’re not talking about solutions for gutters in the sense of sewers, but rather in the sense of those things that catch and redirect water as it rolls off of a roof. Mesh gutter covers are an affordable, remarkably effective solution to keeping out things that can clog up gutter drainage systems, like leaves, branches, and the odd flan. 

                                                                                      —Stephen

[Editor’s note: Today is the Malt Impostor’s 13th Maltiversary! And on this maltiversary, like our first, we celebrate it by having John review a Lagavulin Distiller’s Edition. Enjoy!]

Tasting notes:
This ruby dram noses up with peat smoke, machine grease, crumpled shop rags, oil-soaked seabird wings, and a putrefying starfish in a tidal pool.  I look at Bill and Bill looks at me and we both know it without saying it.  This is Stephen’s love language.  More nosing reveals an oat scone jammed into a toaster that didn’t pop up.  We jimmy it out with a jam knife to find it filled with fig marmalade made by retired cigar rollers.  

The mouth creates the same excitement as the crack of a starting pistol announcing the beginning of the eighth element of a decathlon.  And yes, we get all of the smoke from the pistol too.   We’re not sure of the sport, however, because we experience pinecones and pineapples going down a light molasses water shoot.  The winner is carried forward in a craggy oyster shell in an outrageous mockery of The Birth of Venus.  Zephyr, who sports goat horns, blows resinous billows of smoky menace; Chloris, by contrast, holds out a fitted King-sized sheet in the vain hope that someone will help her fold it.  

Ah, this finish!  On our little used scale of niceness, we put the finish right at Super Nice—which is two clicks past Tom Hanks.  Perhaps some will say things are a bit too “one note” or that the finish hastens like a spring storm.  But we find that there’s an Inception-like continuity that brings back the original sparkle and flash.  More attention reveals a quiet sweetness, like salted caramel, or a still-waters-run-deep wallflower chewing her hair at the office happy hour.  As we close our eyes in concentration or prayer, we feel that unmistakable Dizzy Gillespie finishing note that goes “bwaaaaa!” above the cymbal crashes, tom thumps, and snare pops.    

Rating:
On the scale of Dizzy Gillespie tunes–

The Lagavulin Distiller’s Edition 2020 Release is Groovin’ High–A brilliant bop specimen, with a memorable coda that finds Dizzy scaling the musical summits until he reaches the closing e-flat.  Shaw Nuff!

                                                                                      —John

Happy 13th Maltiversary to us! And thanks to all of you who read us and have read us through the years!

Tasting notes:
The Gordon & MacPhail Connoisseur’s Choice Balblair 1997 23 Year Old, 56.2%, explodes out of my glass like a champion 3 year old horse—juiced on steroids, amphetamines, rocket fuel—that was startled by air horns blasted by impish barely pubescent adolescents larking around. I poured it into my glass, set my glass down, and from across the Malt Table, it announced its presence like Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction. This whisky will not be ignored! The actual nose, rather than the metaphoric impression of the aromas leaping out of the glass, center on unsalted roast almonds, dew-bespecked cherry blossom petals spiraling to the mossy ground, winking in and out of shafts of sunlight, and a pineapple, timorously approaching ripeness. I got also ocean sponges befuddled in tide pools and loofahs rinsed in de-mineralized water. This whisky contains multitudes, including hints of sticky toffee pudding after some time.

The mouth dramatically brings home the power of this expression like the way controlled pyrotechnics send thumping sonic waves through your body, causing your nervous system to vibrate like a Slinky on a weather vane in a tornado. I don’t think “power” is a well-defined or even much-used descriptor of whisky; what I mean is that there is a punch, separate from the alcohol, that is an organizing core for everything else, an evident quiddity yet one that partakes not itself of flavors or aromas. A power-full whisky leaves a looooonnnnnggg impression on the mouth more than the tongue. This Balblair fizzes like Pop Rocks sinking through olive oil into water that releases the carbon dioxide. It’s epic, without being awesome—memorable without an attached value judgement. We got orris, Doris Day, and Morris the Cat: hot and bitter, adorable and clean cut, grumpy and iconic. Again, this whisky contains multitudes. (Note: Obviously we tried adding water and the G&M Balblair 23yo defeated the water! If anything, rather than opening up the whisky, the water contracted it, accentuated a tannin-y formerly undetectable thread and made it as jaggedy as a fractal-edged shuriken.)

The finish was long and mineralized, like a stalactite stabbing at you from a dour, spiteful ceiling. John got a fresh sea cucumber, because of course he did.

[John: Bill! That was you who got the sea cucumber!]

I plead the 5th…of whisky! We also got candied grapefruit zest with a high, bitter, citrus note. As time ticked away, I saw flashbacks from my former days as the whisky burned holes in the nape of my neck. (Good thing I’m rocking a mullet these days!) There is cream, but it’s not creamy. It’s suggestive that cream exists in this world, that cream is lovely, but that there is no cream for you today.

Rating:
On the scale of ecstatic poets–

The Gordon & MacPhail Connoisseur’s Choice 1997 Balblair 23 Year Old, 56.2%, is Walt Whitman— Whitman’s poetry contains multitudes, and Whitman famously asked rhetorically if he contained multitudes. Reader, he answered in the affirmative! All my grapplings and scrabblings at ways of scribbling about the uniqueness of this expression might lead one to think that I didn’t like it. Au contraire, I love it, for I, too, contain multitudes..

                                                                                      —Bill

Our thanks to Max for helping Stephen get a hold of this bottle!

Tasting notes:
This 49.5% rye is not an easy one to find in the wild. I got lucky and stumbled upon one in Memphis, Tennessee, and enjoyed it mostly in nicely iced Old Fashioneds that provided considerable relief from the sweltering summer heat there. But on a later, rather joyful occasion, we had the chance to taste it properly as a rye whiskey with all three of us present in the same room. Being in such a setting can certainly tilt one’s judgment in a dram’s favor. Nonetheless, we tried to be impartial.

For us, the nose opens with green pepper foam from a gastronomic cooking school for precocious 12 year olds. [Bill: Damn! Why did my kid have to go to Circus Camp instead?!?] Give it a second, and notes of perfume, apples, and old rain barrel emerge. Then it becomes clear: it’s Gardenia & Apple Perfume designed exclusively by Yves St. Laurent’s partner Pierre Bergé for the American Girl® doll range. John also got notes of fabric softener and youth. Bill and I weren’t sure if he meant that the whiskey itself tasted young or that the derivative YSL perfume did (which would be understandable, given its target demographic)–nor did we bother to ask.

John, in his note-taking for this dram, felt it necessary to identify two distinct mouths on this particular rye. I think he was trying to convey development over time, rather than a Picasso-esque jumble, but again, it was hard to tell, and neither Bill nor I followed up, so here we go:

Mouth #1: Dank and spicy, and for wusses like John, moldy and harsh. A Mexican bar in full humidity, where your elbows stick to the bar. I found it meatier than that, albeit perhaps a bit mushroomy or fungy-earthy (the first part there being the adjectival form of fungi, of course).

Mouth #2: Brighter on the second sip, and a lot nicer. Perhaps the dankness blew off, John notes. But we all found good spice and body that reminded us a bit of Mortlach. It presents on the second sip as a deeper and more substantial dram. 

Then we all added a little water. John found some of the harsher notes he’d found washed away with a little dilution. Adding water reminded John of Martha Stewart: it’s a good thing. We all thought the taste got cleaner with water, but it lost a bit of its meatiness. In the end, we deemed the addition of water an alloyed partial good, which is probably also true of Martha Stewart (I only came around to this view thanks to her public relationship with Snoop Dogg).

The finish offers a grassy note evocative of yellow flowers. What exactly does that mean, you ask? Could mean dandelions–they are easy enough to find in grass. Could mean buttercups lining a well-manicured lawn. Could mean any number of things–we are not in the habit of interpreting our own work. But in general, this is one of those whiskeys that improves in the glass over time. It really comes together rather than falling apart, and we’re all for anti-entropic forces.

For the finish, the best bank in the world has peat lollipops for the grown-up customers, in which repeated lickings allow a sweetness to emerge, like the rasp of a cough softened by Swiss throat lozenges. I got also honey, produced by jimsonweed-deranged bees. Also: Allen Ginsburg’s Howl, read in tandem by Tom Waits and Jeremy Irons. Also: Smoked Oysters, slip-sliding down the throat as if they lived their mollusky lives hoping for nothing other than an apotheosis in my belly. A life well-lived, smoked oysters! proudly proclaims my tum-tum.

Rating:
On the scale of anti-entropic forces–

The Castle and Key Restoration Rye 2020 Batch 2 is the role of art in our lives–Open to much more subjective judgment and interpretation than the other main candidate here (rationality), art often tries to impose order–or even make us more aware of the disorder–we encounter in reality. The degree to which it succeeds is left to the beholder. But try hard this one does–and for many it will succeed.

                                                                                      —Stephen

Tasting notes:
Before we begin, a Zoom-era amusing anecdote about this dram. Since Stephen moved to Norway, our meetings have been on FaceTime or Zoom. Since the pandemic, many meetings transpire with the three of us in different undisclosed locations, creating, at times, logistical complexities involving blind tastings of small samples. This particular time, an unidentified Impostor mislabeled two of the samples! In particular, my sample of this one, the peaty Douglas Laing Rock Island 21 Year Old, was mislabeled as a particularly sherried dram. As we were sipping and chattering away, I was talking about the evident peat, etc., etc. Various other Impostors thought me crazy, wondering why I wasn’t getting the explosive sherry bomb they were, asserting my taste buds to be washed out, wondering if “Impostor” was too high a compliment for my whisky-reviewing capabilities, etc. Well, dear readers, there’s a lesson to be learned. I’m not sure what it is, but it *feels* like there must be!

On to the review:
The nose of the Rock Island 21 Year Old, 46.8% abv, opens with burnt matzoh, green turpentine-fraught pine needles that aren’t catching fire, but merely smoldering with wisping curlicues of straight peat, homie. My peat receptors are on Defcon Five! There are also rocket engines firing as the main fuel tank disengages, sizzling and hot. Improbably, the rocket is running on smoked peppermint and Jamon Iberico wrapped ’round a staticky dangling old-timey microphone, wreathed also in cigarette smoke, in an “ON AIR” radio booth in which a fedora-wearing, grey-tweed suit-wearing, old-timey sportscaster is, uh, casting sports.

On the mouth, we got smoke on the water, smoke on the land, smoke in the air, and smoke in the smoke. Also, a car cigarette pop-in lighter that was unforgivably dropped into a Seven Up, fished out, and with naught but a cursory exhalation of (smoky) breath meant to dry off the coils, unforgivably and prematurely pushed into the dashboard, causing a short circuit, leading to—you guessed it!—more wisps of smoke. Paradise by the Dashboard Light, indeed. There’s also some freshly-ground nutmeg, some forgotten tarragon burning in a dry sauté pan, and creamed high fructose corn syrup mixed into a chaotic frenzy by a Cuisinart.

For the finish, the best bank in the world has peat lollipops for the grown-up customers, in which repeated lickings allow a sweetness to emerge, like the rasp of a cough softened by Swiss throat lozenges. I got also honey, produced by jimsonweed-deranged bees. Also: Allen Ginsburg’s Howl, read in tandem by Tom Waits and Jeremy Irons. Also: Smoked Oysters, slip-sliding down the throat as if they lived their mollusky lives hoping for nothing other than an apotheosis in my belly. A life well-lived, smoked oysters! proudly proclaims my tum-tum.

Rating:
On the scale of mistaken identities–

The Douglas Laing’s Rock Island 21 Year Old Limited Edition Blended Malt is Elijah Wood and Daniel Radcliffe–They’ve both anchored and embodied the key role in vast fantasy epics, they’ve both taken on wildly “indie movie cred” crazy roles since, and by gum, they look so much alike that surely one would be crazy to label one of them “peaty” and the other “sherried”!

                                                                                      —Bill

Tasting notes:
Ah, there it is.  That delicious Islay nose.  Scrumptious.  And then the memories flood in.  But in this case, instead of a crumbled madeleine, this is a Claymore mine stuffed with Bosna sandwiches that spray out with blasted-up clods of peat.  In my disorientation, I think I see a wolverine covered in day-spa facial mud leaping into a slightly slimy green pond.  But now it’s all a kaleidoscope of smells.  S’mores with no chocolate, the marshmallow rippled with carbonized sugar and graham cracker crumbs.  Then there are hints of fruit–just like kids peeking out from behind a door frame when unfamiliar company arrives for dinner.  Look, there’s fresh apricot!  Do I see ripe pear?  And is that a cluster of bright green grapes?  What a meal this will be!  

The mouth so captivates us that we make a forensic turn.  Is this a funky ass Ardbeg?  Perhaps.  But we’re thinking an Ardbeg aged in casks holding Shakey’s Pizza.  There’s something punky in there that makes me think Laphroaig, but without the brininess and maritime dimensions.  Or so we think at the time.  But whatever the provenance, we are enjoying this.  Imagine a heavy stone covered in moss, put into a kiln for drying, and then used to fire a sauna.  There is a great earthiness on the mouth that we love, plus some high register stuff too, like Heraclitean flames sparking Zeus’ cigar, if that cigar had been rolled in flower petals and blood orange peels.

At risk of a mundane reference, I want to call this a real yum fest.  [Bill: It’s cute that John thinks, after all this time, that there are such “risks” as these.] [Stephen: It really is.]  We love that Islay note running continuously through the dram like a Chinese dragon puppet so long you cannot see the end of it.  It is a lovely peaty heaven, making me wonder: am I descended from peat?  Is this why it calls out to me in such a way?  As I ponder this, the finish tapers and then inverts into the mouth.  Is this not a gustatory Mobius strip tease, with clothes that are removed and put back on in more or less the same motion?

Rating:
On the scale of Salzburg street foods–

The Aerolite Lyndsay is the Bosna sandwich–Oh, you might think that this is just an Austrian hot dog, but you underestimate at your peril.  Because with the delicious Bratwurst, spicy mustard, and curry spices, this has heft and moxie.  A yum fest.

                                                                                      —John

Tasting notes:
The nose of this dram opens with rosewater-soaked dates visited by Nepalese honey bees. It’s very high and refined, but raises a question: who are the sherpa bees on such an expedition? As the nose goes, it gets more subtle and more distinguished, but yet more intense. Imagine barium and chromium oil paints, but with distinctive berry notes, like cloudberry. This is the smell of a library from the perspective of an autodidact. It’s all refinement, spun flax mixed with silk, and beautiful endpapers.  

The mouth, however, is straight magic. We get liquefied pearls with equal measure of liquefied topaz. This is what bees would be doing if they got off Facebook and got busy pollinating stuff instead of spreading that disinformation about the blight. We also got a distinct note of dragon fruit. Or is it bread fruit?  Bread dragons eating dragon bread–and loving it so hard that flaming saliva drips down their scales.  

The finish would stay for days, if you gave it that long. Actually, it would be an ideal “prompter” for a two-day fasting regime (just don’t brush your teeth). There’s so much punch to this finish and it lasts so long, it’s basically an MMA submission hold that you don’t tap out of. You know, I don’t want to describe it: I want to become one with it. I want to transubstantiate it. I want it to transubstantiate me. Please?

Rating:
On the scale of religious orthodoxies I can get on board with–

The Balblair 1983 is assumption–Not to be confused with consumption (neither the disease nor the capitalist versions) and unrelated to making an ass out of you and me, this is something only Elijah ever pulled off. Going to heaven without dying! Now that’s a way to go. And the Balblair 1983 is darn close.

                                                                                      —Stephen

–Our thanks to Balblair for the sample!