Smoked lavender

We found ourselves in a busy kitchen, our noses revelling in the scents of making blackcurrant and lavender jam while roasting chicken in anise-flavoured pastis and orange juice next to clams steaming in white wine and garlic. The taste was an intriguing mixture of earthy, ashy and sweet flavours like that of lightly smoked chopped sugar cane sticks followed by blood orange marmalade and a Jamaican ginger beer. After the addition of water, the scent of sandalwood mingled with aromas of toasted marshmallows and burnt toast with lavender honey. On the palate, we found the creamy texture of buttery baklava and a mango lassi with an intriguing sprinkling of green nori. Following 17 years in an ex-bourbon hogshead, we transferred this whisky into a first fill American oak oloroso hogshead.