McLaren's first XV

Freshly cut turf, earthy dry mushrooms, candied walnuts with coffee and armagnac accompanied the muscle rub emanating from the first-team changing rooms as they dug in to their Saturday morning cereal at the RFC. Those props, as cunning as a bag o’weasels, added botanical cola, liquorice, fennel seeds, honeyed black tea and old malbec wines to the starting line-up on the palate. A couple of drips from the magic sponge and we were away, jumping like a Border salmon in a river to find shoe polish, pâtisseries, molasses, caramel maraschino cherries and over-aged red wine ploughing through the nose. A palate of salted caramel, butter, lovage, orange, more liquorice and fennel seeds, celery sticks, caraway crackers and rye crispbreads joined lingonberry jam, hot blackcurrant juice, waxy alpine herb sweets and herbal tea as they sprinted for the line like a runaway bullet! Safe as houses; warm as toast, this whisky was filled into an ex-bourbon hogshead in 2005, then subsequently transferred to an American oak first fill ex-PX hogshead at the age of 19.