A 17yo Bowmore usually means good things if its and independent bottlings. It would be great if the distillery was able to capture some of that Bowmore magic in an official release.
Cragganmore has something unique to it. Part of it is the lightly peated malt they use, which combined with long fermentation times, oddly shaped stills, and worm tubs, makes for a whisky with its own DNA.
As you don't often encounter a genever of such a respectable age, reviewing the new 17yo and 21yo from Filliers in one post is actually quite decadent.
Serge Valentin, Ruben Luyten and Johan van Samang, three (former) whisky bloggers I immensely respect, all gave this Bowmore 1996 from The Whisky Agency high scores and even higher praise. I hope it can live up to that.