My birthday this month was on a Saturday and late on the Friday before my group at work surprised me with a cake and a gift: Balblair 1989! I shared it with about 15 people and I had 4 drams myself. When we were finished there was about one finger left in the bottle. One really neat thing is they selected the Balblair based on the results of querying through our tasting notes on this site.

I have never been party to finishing a newly opened bottle in one session but this was really close as the Balblair was just that good. Two guys said they never liked alcohol of any kind before, but were happy to toast me on my birthday, and said they very much enjoyed this expression.

One notable flavor, early in the palate, was banana which was fun. Also the late palate had a nice shock to it like a menthol would. It was so impressive I decided to feature it at the 1Q12 tasting.