Tasting Notes
The nose suggested French toast with cinnamon and maple syrup, "cowboy boots trampling blood oranges", dried fruits, honey on straw and balsamic glaze – wonderfully complex. The palate was punchy and powerful, evoking charred staves, Turkish coffee, toffee apples and spicy pinchos Morunos, with a drying finish of liquorice and ash. The reduced nose carried crème brûlée, butterscotch and blowtorched bananas, tinned mandarins and damson jam. The palate sweetened to demerara and barley sugars; the finish seemed still dry, yet lip-smacking (toasted almonds, waxy physalis, leather and wood). Nine years in ex-bourbon wood preceded a spell in this heavy toast, medium char, first fill barrel.