Life's a Riot

SPIRIT NOTES

The neat nose suggested to us such appealing things as caramelised ginger, heather ales, buttered pumpernickel bread and salted Dutch liquorice. With time a really deep and potent peat smoke aroma unfurled itself, along with impressions of kerosene, roof pitch, bitumen and exploded first aid kits (we thought, anyway). With water we got a campfire topped up with camphor, plus burnt heather, salted honey, smoked meats and fruity chutney sharpened with sherry vinegar – what a riot ... what a beast! The palate was alive with raw seawater, petrol, hot and salty chips, green olives bobbing in a sea of dirty martini, pure iodine and industrial-strength mouthwash. Water could not tame this serpent, instead it swaggered all over the place, nonchalantly throwing off notes of pickled tarragon, smoked goat's cheese, browned butter with capers and smoked mussels, and lashings of hessian soaked in soy sauce. Silly and amazing whisky. At six years of age, we combined selected casks from the same distillery. We then returned the single malt into a variety of different casks to develop further. This is one of those casks, a second fill Spanish oak sherry butt that previously matured SMWS bottling 30.111.