Bowmore Tempest, 10 year old, batch 5

The Bowmore Tempest series has been discontinued since 2015, but strangely enough, it is available again in a number of places. I don’t know how that happened all of a sudden, but it gave me the opportunity to revisit a whisky that I loved at the time. Unfortunately, I didn’t write any tasting notes of it back then, so for a comparison, I will have to do with what I still know about it (and I can tell you…. my memory is not that good!).

The Tempest was a small batch release that first hit the market in 2009. All batches were matured in 1st fill bourbon casks and all were also bottled at cask strength. In my opinion, the best combination for Bowmore, but which unfortunately doesn’t occur very often, except for a few Feis Ile bottlings, such as this one from 2019 and maybe a few indie releases, but I haven’t actually seen many of them this year.

A pity, but I was happy to see this Bowmore Tempest back on the shelves, even though it’s only very temporary. So, now let’s see if it is still as good as I think it is. 🙂

This Bowmore has matured in 1st fill bourbon casks and is bottled at 55.9% ABV.

Bowmore Tempest tasting notes:

Nose: a layer of subtle smoke and very fruity. Lemons and pink grapefruit. Quickly followed by a light note of vanilla. Green apple peels. It’s somewhat ashy and salty too. Later also bananas, but more towards that candy then the fruit. Then some sweetness from honey.

Taste: again subtle smoke and pink grapefruit. An ashy note too. Vanilla. Banana candies. A little salty and somewhat peppery, white pepper mostly.

Finish: short to mid-long. again ashy and salty. Vanilla too.

There’s a nice complexity in the nose, but from the palate and especially in the finish it becomes somewhat one-dimensional. The finish disappears quite quickly too. Partly because of this, it loses some points in my view. But it doesn’t alter the fact that it’s just a nice affordable dram, not as good as I remember (not sure if I had the same batch back then), but still rather lovely. Too bad that this is no longer released, I would have liked to see more batches of this. Especially since Bowmore and bourbon casks go so well together.