And, in thick shelter of black shades imbowered,
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 work ‘Comus’, 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, 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’ we have 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?
We call it Comus.
Do not be deceived, all is not what it seems.
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 world-wide