A powerful sherry bomb, bottled at cask strength for maximum impact! It comes from a Highlands distillery famous for its usually smoky whisky, but this unusual expression is completely unpeated, and dominated by the Oloroso instead: a first maturation period in a second fill butt, and then 34 months in first fill to give it an extra winey boost. It’s an extreme style, very oaky but luckily quite clean: nutty, very dry, with notes of old furniture, cocoa powder, and a whiff of camphor. The same almost brutal impact of sherry and oak can be found at the palate: do not be ashamed to add some drops of water to tame it a bit. Tannic, austere, but not exceedingly astringent: again, it’s very nutty, dry and winey. There are notes of black coffee, a hint of leather, a whiff of pinewood, and a toasted touch which might be mistaken for smokiness. It’s chewy and intense, growing spicier, more tannic and with a touch of gentian bitterness in the finale.