What a beautiful olfactory spectrum.

On 22/01/2021 I opened a new bottle, what to say...

This whisky is simply a CANNONATA!

Off 20/02/2021 It is finishing.

Way too much bad sulphur for my taste.

It's delicious! Like astellar Benrinnes I had the other day, this dram has the full package of sweet, tart, bitter, salty, and savoury. Individually, I love the flavours of tropical fruit, cedar, herbs, and seashore individually, but together, they all compliment and amplify each other. I tried this blind and the pine and green tea notes had me thinking this might have been a Bowmore.

Nose: A blast of fresh sea air right up front. Various stonefruit: peaches, apricots, and red-on-the-inside plums (and plum sauce!). Sweet and waxy honeycomb, some barley sugar, vanilla pudding, rice crackers, mango lassi, and pralines. Some savoury spice: dried oregano, cedar, pickled ginger, and some green olive maybe. Oh, miso soup! Some green tea, particularly from the empty glass.

Palate: Thick texture. Honey and apples on the arrival, turning to guava jelly, pomelo, pineapple, strawberries, and melon, then rapidly to herbs and oak. Long herbal development, with pine trees, charred oak, light peat, birch logs, and oregano. Cooked sugar and some more savoury dashi-ish notes here. Candy apples, plums, boiled sweets, almonds, and honey on the back end.

Finish: Medium-long. Honeycomb, milk chocolate, tangerine peel, yellow apples, rhubarb, raisins, and more red plums. Matcha, clove, and sandalwood. Seashore mud and stone dust. Lingering earth and a bit of blue cheese.

Ben Nevis 21 years old, 1998 - 2019, 55.4%. Cask: BN9819 for Hidden Spirit.

One of the most difficult bottles to obtain this year. A media slaughter on social networks has almost killed all possibilities of obtaining it normally. (Sold in pack).
But after multiple visits to LMDW, yes, it's good, it's on the side, then finally no, we can't sell it to you, then, yes again, I got it.
Let's see this little beast from every angle.

● The coat: copper, large drops, slow and spaced.

● Rancio, walnuts, Jerez wine, Olorosso. Well oxidative.
An old wood.
The soybeans heated in the pan then the four quarter which comes out of the oven, hot butter.
Milk chocolate, prunes and cherry in brandy.
Freshness escapes, mint.
I let breathe.
Fantastic !! Manjari dark chocolate, tangy and very fruity: blackcurrant and blueberry in jam.
Leather and brown tobacco.
What a nose!

● In the mouth it is sweet, the liquid covers the entire palate.
It is clean and neat, very oxidative aromas reminiscent of nuts, old wood, earth and leather, brown tobacco.
A Sherry Olorosso, clearly.
Lots of tannins, peppery power and bitter liquorice.
Everything is very dry.
Time, a salty touch, retro olfaction pushes dark chocolate, coffee beans, and dark fruits.
Leather again.

● the finish is relatively long, dry, with a salty return, a salt that is difficult to target, rather saline, the bonito dried at first sensation, the one I usually take at Atami.
Astonishing.
Long persistence on this black pepper and tannins, the minerality ends.

An amazing whisky, it certainly deserves a very long opening, and will develop really later. I left him 1 week before describing it.
The nose is fabulous, makes you want to dive in, the mouth is rich and fine, dry, saline and oxidative, obviously dominated by the notes of Sherry, it's a good whisky but, but ... but I don't know .

If it had to be given a subjective score, it would be an 88.