The colour is auburn and the texture shows a sticky ring that refuses to build tears for a long time (a fine oiliness!). The most important thing first: There is not a single trace of sulphur neither in the nose nor on the palate, hats off to such a careful cask selection! This alone is a great achievement these days, sadly... The nose offers a fine and bold (most customers demand boldness in their dram nowadays, unfortunately) modern sherry profile with a great mixture of american, european and caucasian wood characteristics - an interesting selection of casks, indeed! This makes the nose very interesting to explore and much more complex than just the "mono-line" bottlings of other (former famous) sherried malts (no, I do not mention Macallan here...). Still I like old school sherried drams more but this is really good according to my olfactory cells.

The taste is multi-layered as is the nose on a lot of different sherry-induced flavours, actually all of them. The balance is quite nice and there is no flaw or off-note that I can find. Water releases more aromas and flavours both in the nose and on the palate, among them an astonishingly bold prune flavour (I like this!). It turns the reduced dram more approachable and quaffable but I like the power of the neat dram too. Actually, I like it both neat and reduced to the usual drinking strength of around 43-46% abv.

The whisky arrives a little hot (no wonder at 62.1% abv) and immediately coating in the mouth with no distracting moments, I like that! The fine oiliness converts into a pleasant mouthfeel (and I expect a long finish, too). The finish is (as expected from the oiliness) long and like so often with sherried drams more chocolatey and nutty. Again no distracting moments like bitter-drying-astringent ones.

Discreet, dry, rich wood tones, old furniture varnish, old leather goods, pipe tobacco, homemade marshmallows, dried apples and pears, prunes, raisins, roasted nuts, light mineral and industrial shades, fruit jam, caramel, light earthy motifs, fried vegetables and meat, a very wide palette, requires some preparation from the taster.

Intense, bright, dry woody lacquer notes, pipe tobacco, prunes, pu-erh, raisins, tart mineral tones, burnt rusks, stout, burnt caramel, cola, baklava, some dirty industrial shades, black pepper.

Spicy, warming, woody tobacco, dry, old leather goods, prunes, pu-erh, nuts, coffee with sourness, in the development of a little creamy sweetness, cola and metallic sourness.