Smoke and cloves hit the nose immediately. Followed by more cloves and assorted phenols, an iodine tinge. In the background there's maple, dried cherries, and plums. The palate... oooh. Neat. Definitely sherry stuff in here, all sorts of "darker" fruit aspects -- plums, cherries, dates. Smoke mixes in along with cocoa, coffee, and exotic spices. In the long finish, the smoke takes over. Water mellows the whisky in a pleasing way, bringing greater grapey sweetness, and taming the spice. As I drink more of this, I can't help but just feel that some flavor in here is too overwhelming... something in the spice/sherry/smoke combo doesn't work as well as I wish it did. But this is a pretty interesting and complex beast, and a mouthful of aggressive, tasty fun. B/B+
N: Smoked meat, burnt hair, plum sauce (big time), BBQ ribs. P: Sherry and peat monster, Halls Mentholyptus and cherry cough drops, and obviously some peat. This whisky is huge! F: Char on the bone of BBQ ribs. A little water and the peat becomes more prominent along with a little camphor in the nose. While this borders on over the top, it immediately became my top choice among the many open bottles in my bar. And it drained quickly.
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