Just a few Bowmore with highs and lows


May 28, 2026

Just a few Bowmore with highs and (very) lows

There are plenty of Bowmores in the pipeline again, but we’re going to start by tasting just a wee bunch of similar ages. Although there may perhaps be one or two of the early, and very nasty, NAS ones…

Bowmore 2005/2026 (48.8%, The Whisky Agency, Made for Friends, refill sherry hogshead, 269 bottles)

Let’s admit it, we’ve very little to fear here. Colour: white wine. Nose: someone has blended mango juice, passion fruit juice, seawater and paraffin oil. Entirely by the book. Mouth: splendid peppery, salty and smoky maracuja. No doubt there’s scarcely any need to say more. Finish: much the same, with more pink grapefruit. The aftertaste becomes a touch more medicinal, camphory, throat lozenges and so forth. Comments: these pinpoint salty exotic fruits are absolutely magnificent. The combination, pushed here to its utmost, may unsettle certain enthusiasts, but not us. Right. Strictly between us, it’s as though they really had added a litre or two of water from Loch Indaal. Certain aspects also remind us of Bowmores distilled in the early 1960s.
SGP:655 - 90 points.

As a matter of fact, we’re about to check what we’ve just said straight away…

Bowmore 8 yo (43%, OB, Sherriff’s, Emmepi Italy, +/-1975)

This is what we call the ship label (whisky enthusiasts have never shown much imagination, it would seem). The absolutely incredible 8-year-old is the ‘pear shape bottle’, incidentally (WF 96). Colour: gold. Nose: a sensation of smoked buttercream, old clothes forgotten in an old wardrobe, including furs, very old champagne, very ripe medlars, white truffle (from Alba, please), and tarragon (béarnaise sauce). And patchouli. One could almost be in an old Barbet Schroeder film. Mouth: it lacks a little punch after all these years, and there’s a rather surprising liqueur-like side to it, but the salty spikes and the old raki aspect are quite beautiful. Like many bottles from those days bottled at 40 or 43%, it seems to be about to start to bid us farewell, though with infinite grace. Finish: not so short, slightly metallic, with touches of smoked ham and slightly stale white pepper. Comments: deeply moving, very beautiful, somewhat fragile nowadays. If possible, they ought to be tasted without too much delay.
SGP:543 - 88 points.

Bowmore 18 yo 2007/2026 (50.3%, Boogieman Whisky Society, Gentle Giant, bourbon hogshead, 90 bottles)

One cannot help but think here of the excellent British prog rock band Gentle Giant, which partly soundtracked our adolescence. Colour: pale white wine. Nose: seawater and peat, lemon juice, green apple. A true blade that cuts you cleanly into two equal halves, as they say, yet it does so gently into the bargain. Very pure, simple, magnificent. With just a drop of water: add a few touches of clay and slate. Mouth: this is ultra-Bowmorian, with no odd wood or wine getting in our way, and with a few rather obvious echoes of the Sherriff’s when you have them facing one another in two glasses. The seawater aspect is unmistakable. With water: I suspect, though I cannot provide proof, that the old Sherriff’s used to be like this thirty or forty years ago. Seawater, lemon juice, top-notch minerality, millimetric peat. Finish: long and very salty. Comments: it is rare for distilleries to release versions as devoid of make-up as this, and for that we must thank the independents. We could never do so often enough.
SGP:465 - 90 points.

There were those old stories about casks being rolled through Loch Indaal to the puffers when they couldn’t dock, which supposedly added that seawater character to the whiskies. But we’ve never had any proof that it was actually true.

Bowmore 18 yo 2007/2026 (54.1%, Wu Dram Clan, bourbon barrel, cask #6358)

Colour: pale white wine. Nose: same territory, same purity, just with a little more substance. This is Bowmore straight out of the textbooks, as we would have said before social media and AI. And I adore those simple stewed apple notes that bring an awful lot of rustic charm (what?) to the whole. With water: ah indeed, fresh paint, putty, engine oil and pistachio paste. Mouth (neat): chiselled stuff, tropical, citrusy, clayey and maritime all at once. Stick it in the freezer and have it with a seafood platter, just as you regularly do with vodka and caviar. With water: we return to the purity of pure Bowmore. Indeed. The exotic fruits are knocking at the door, let’s wait for the finish… Finish: it remains measured, balanced and elegant, with slightly underripe mango coming along to sign off the whole affair. Comments: an ultra-classic Bowmore, at once exuberant and introspective, if such a thing were even possible.
SGP:555 - 91 points.

We’ll finish this little session with an old official bottling, for a bit more historical perspective, okay?

Bowmore ‘Voyage’ (56%, OB, Port Casked, 2000)

We never published an official tasting note for this version, perhaps because we never quite had the courage. Between ourselves, this was the era when they were using wine casks for finishing rather haphazardly, but I know personally enthusiasts who rather liked this one, so let’s not judge too hastily… That said, it has taken us 25 years to get around to it, which rather tells you all you need to know about the motivation levels involved… Colour: full gold. Nose: not so bad, leather, dried tomatoes, dried seaweed, marmalade with honey… In any case it’s less winey than we had expected (according to our hazy memories). And it’s a thousand times better than the Claret or the Darkest, at least for now, though admittedly that’s hardly difficult. With water: not bad, fig jam and fresh cement. Mouth (neat): fine for about two seconds, but the FWP emerges quickly enough, lavender, violet, bay leaf, soap, supermarket eau de toilette… With water: the lavender toilet water side takes control. Finish: same story. Very soapy. A touch of strawberry sweeties. Comments: fairly horrible on the palate, though the nose remains more or less acceptable. We had hoped that 25 years in bottle might have slightly eradicated these ‘artificial’ notes, but no such luck. We shall nevertheless keep the score relatively moderate, as a tribute to Bowmore ‘for services rendered’. But this very unbalanced and faintly vomit-inducing ‘Voyage’ is one of the worst of them all, the sort of thing that makes you want to rather stay at home. No, things were not better in the old days.
SGP:772 - 35 points.

Check the index of all Bowmore we've tasted