Bowmore 17 Years Old White Sands Travel retail exclusive 43% NAS

Professionele reviews

Gal Granov (88)

Nose: Toffee and smoke layered upon a melange of exotic fruit, a bit of zest , but a lot creamier than what I had expected.

Palate: A sweet juicy palate. Lots of barley sugars, golden syrup , caramel candy and vanilla intertwined with delicate smoke and earthy peat with the teensiest bit of pepper. This is one of the creamier Bowmores I’ve had. Beautiful. But not very maritime if you’re looking for that.

Finish: Milk chocolate. Caramel. Fudge and peat smoke.


Bottom line:

A belter of a dram. Not very smoky and peaty with maritime notes but a creamy smoky delight it surely is, although you normally don’t look for a lot of peat in a typical Bowmore, this one is indeed very elegant and offers a touch of Islay with a lot of smoothness.

Gal Granov

Malt Fascination (87)

17 year old Bowmore, from bourbon casks. That does sound good to me. I quite enjoyed a sample of this back in the day, when I participated in that Twitter tasting for its release. Then, last year in my local bottle shop they unearthed a bottle of this and I decided to get my hands on it.

The lion’s share of it was shared over the months following, and this weekend I decided to end my last 10 cl of it, or what was left of that. Just to see how my palate changed over the last decade. Sample size one, so that doesn’t say much, but I do like to re-evaluate stuff once in a while.
Sniff:
Very crisp and very Bowmore-y. As in, there definitely is peat and smoke, but it’s not as in-your-face as the south and east of Islay distilleries. There’s a hint of banana and apple, almost no salinity, but there’s a bit of fruity acidity.

Sip:
The palate has a peppery smoke with with a warming palate. Banana, apple, coconut, peat. Quite gentle after the initial hit of black pepper. Quite a bit of white oak too, far more than on the nose.

Swallow:
The finish is very similar. Less peppery and that leaves a little bit more room for the fruity notes. White grapes show up, and the banana is gone. Apples are still present. Some peat smoke with a bit more coastal flavors than before.

Some tasting notes are different from what they were in 2014. Most of them are the same. So that’s something, I guess. I still quite like this dram, although I’m not as impressed by it as I was back in the day. I might have been a bit too enthusiastic then, or I am a bit more cynical now. Who’s to say.