Bruichladdich Octomore Comus 04.2

And, in thick shelter of black shades embowered,
Excels his mother at her mighty art;
Offering to every weary traveller
His orient liquor in a crystal glass

These words are from John Milton’s play written in 1634. It’s a philosophical discourse about the tension between sensual pleasure and physical abandon, extravagance and moderation, chastity and virtue.
Milton’s morality play of a beautiful virgin’s struggle to protect her virtue is based on an ancient legend.
Bacchus, the god of wine (and debauchery), seduced the enchantress Circe, ‘the loveliest of all immortals’, daughter of Helios the sun god. The result of their union, a son, Comus.

Invested with the divine powers of his parents, Comus ‘excels his mother at her mighty art’, in conjuring up yet more powerful magic potions.

His was the skill to create sensual, hedonistic and intoxicating potions, ‘orient liquor in a crystal glass’ that could seduce the innocent, and the virginal, with wild, sensual orgiastic pleasures.
Comus became the god of excess. But in Milton’s struggle, the innocent’s virtue prevails.

In Octomore 4:2 ‘COMUS’ there is such a mysterious and ambrosial potion.
The same duality, a similar struggle: the most heavily peated whisky in the world, matured in the very finest oak possible, impregnated with the greatest sweet wine known to man.
An unlikely combination. A tension? An excess? Or a divine, ethereal, otherworldly experience?

They call it Comus.

As with all previous releases of Octomore, this is bottled at 5 years of age. Distilled from barley peated to 167 ppm. There are only 18,000 bottles available worldwide