Longrow CV
Peathead Revisited
1 1588
RReview by @Rigmorole
- Nose~
- Taste~
- Finish~
- Balance~
- Overall88
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- Brand: Longrow
- Type: Scotch
- Region: Campbeltown
- ABV: 46%
I feel a bit sad that this scotch is fading into the yester'sphere. It grew on me over time. Parting is such peaty sorrow.
Here are the final tweaks on my tasting notes:
Nose--Grass fire, hay, reptile musk, lovely hint of peat, virgin olive oil, ash, peppermint.
Palate--A very unconventional exchange: Lemon, pan fried rattle snake, mesquite smoke, anejo tequila, mescal, peaty goodness.
Finish--The oily and the spicy intertwine and then release with lingering peat and smoke, with a touch of oaken wood in there.
METAPHORICAL MUSINGS & MARGINALIA This whisky is a bit strange, although I have tasted tequila-like and/or mescal-like influences in other whiskies from time to time. Such overtones are not unheard of, certainly, but rare all the same.
The way tequila interacts with oak is different than the way scotch does--usually. In this case, with such a relatively young whisky that shouldn't have any wood flavor in it, there is some. Why? How? What?
I have to speculate that Springbank mixed in few funky oldish casks into the CV, along with a decidedly young Longrow. The grotty, sugary youth and burn is in there, but it has been mellowed by something that is magically unique and yet deliciously grimy, all the same.
Is the new white labeled Longrow Peated more consistent, producing a more expected end on the taste buds?
Yes, I should think so . . . and yet . . . sometimes the unexpected is worth trying, or even becoming accustomed to.
Over the past year, I have gone back a few times to the Longrow CV with better and better results. Like Oliver Onions' "beckoning fair one" of gothic literaria, L-Row CV has intoned my name through long, dark corridors of the soul.
Did I answer this Dark Passenger, you ask?
Hell, no. Never provoke a ghost, or a sociopathic scotch. If anyone sees you whispering into your glass, there's always the chance you could find yourself locked in a safe house with padded walls and nutters for company.
Suffice it to say that Longrow CV has an ethereal quality best appreciated without too much fuss and bother. It is an eerily strange dram, the sensory trappings of which might have been somewhat passable one hundred years ago, or might still be hundred years into the future . . . a Customer in Black, it is, that sits quietly in the corner of the pub, brooding like, sipping, brooding some more . . . that CIB SOB who comes in late when nobody seems to be watching, orders his drink from the bartender (who can't seem to recall serving him) and then somehow disappears right before last call, leaving the door open behind him, and his empty glass on the table.
In the case of the CV, I wish I had carried on a conversation with this "weird peat-head in the corner" . . . alas, it is gone, never to be purchased again.
Hear, hear: "The Longrow is dead, long live the Longrow."
"enough, or Too much!"
Signed, Yr. obt. servant Theobaldus of Tarland
Find where to buy Longrow whisky
My video review: www.youtube.com/watch