Bushmills 10 Year Old Single Malt

On this tenth day of March I am going to have a taste of the Bushmills' 10 Year Old Single Malt. I have been looking forward to this tasting for some time now and am eager to get going. This whiskey spent most of its ten years in bourbon casks and was finished in Oloroso sherry casks. The only other Bushmills' single malt I have tried before this was the 16 year old, and I can only describe that as almost like candy. A little younger the 10 year old may be but I am no less excited.

For musical accompaniment I have chosen to go with Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon. This album was released 41 years ago today. It is not only Pink Floyd's most commercially successful album (over 1500 weeks in the charts and 45 million copies sold) it is also one of the most successful albums of all time. A true masterpiece, this album takes you on a journey of intense space rock with unparallelled sound engineering. When I was about eighteen years old I had heard that this album could be matched with The wizard of Oz movie. I decided to give it a try. Some of the film lined up with the music while other parts lead me to believe that this was just some stoner's experiment. All the same it was fun. How can you go wrong with one of the greatest movies of all time mixed with one of the worlds greatest albums.

Let's see if the music can fit with this dram.

Nose: mouth watering honey sweetness with a touch of spice. I also detect what I can only describe as old paperbacks.

Palate: starts off as wood and then quickly opens up into chocolate notes that develop into the sweetness of lychee. The mouth feel is exquisite.

Finish: a long finish of the lychee hangs on and then the wood comes back before the finish quickly fades.

True to its Irish nature this whisky is very smooth and light. It is delicious, approachable and all around attractive. As for whether the music worked with this dram... I think that there aren't a lot of situations that this album couldn't work with.

Next weeks tasting will be on St Patrick's day. I think that one should call for a double.

Until then have a great week.