Description
This was clearly a huge whisky, agreed the Panel. Immediately we started getting notes of mineral salts, beach sand, smouldering sandalwood, salt and pepper squid, dense peat smoke and brown sauce on a slab of square sausage. Water brought such things as sea urchin dashed on wet rocks, burning hay, salted butter, pork scratchings drizzled with malt vinegar, and umami ramen broth with a boiled egg. The palate was superbly creamy in texture with a dazzlingly intense peat-smoke profile: we found lots of rich American oak influence, singed coconut, sweet tar liqueur, herbal mouthwash and various ointments and embrocations. With water it became marginally drier with coal smoke, sooty sausages on a barbecue, wet kelp, smoked razor clams, resinous fir wood and antiseptic. At six years of age, we combined two bourbon hogsheads from the same distillery into this cask for further maturation and marrying. This second fill butt was previously used to mature another Two to One bottling, 7.243.