There was a parcel for me in building reception yesterday. I wasn’t sure what it might be, cos I haven’t ordered anything in a while so far as memory serves. The desk-lady reached under the desk and produced a box, and profferred it to me. You know how you suddenly know what a box is going to be as soon as you see the way someone else handles it? You can get a rough idea of its weight and mass-distribution by seeing how people lift and pass an object, and in this case, by the way that she fumbled it and fingertip-juggled to keep the box in the air rather than crashing down onto the stone tiles below.
Evidently as she was executing this 1-person volleyball equivalent skill she must have caught a glimpse of my eyes widening in panic, as her attempts to prevent a box-to-floor interface took on an extra degree of urgency and she caught it again. In mock lightheartedness she said “Wow, I bet if that had broken someone would’ve had a bad week!”, and it struck me that given its ludicrously high peat content, the recipient of the bad week would be whoever had borken this particular bottle of whisky and therefore had to scrub the floor to get the smoky smell out of the building lobby. Not to mention me running around screaming in anguish, as well.
Can’t wait to try this stuff – Bruichladdich Octomore: the bottle suggests its phenol level is 130ppm, so it’s gonna taste quite different (Lagavulin I believe is about 40ppm).
I pre-ordered this stuff on a whim a couple of months ago, and then clean forgot about it. It’ll be interesting, and it’s definitely an “event” in whisky – I’m not 100% sure what’s going on, as earlier reports on Octomore talked about a peat level of 80.5ppm, and that the bottles were only going to be sold to people who had bought “Whisky futures” with the distillery. In any case, I’m looking very much forward to trying it, and if my cold doesn’t get any better before the day I decide to open it then at least my knackered tastebuds should be able to taste something.