This big whisky starts with dry, sweet and savoury aromas – old hessian sacks, dunnage warehouse, dried apricots, orange fruit pastilles, marmalade, tomato chutney and a faint whiff of iodine. The taste is savoury and spicy with tannic woody notes. Rich roast beef gravy, dark chocolate and brown sugar it was thick and mouth coating.

Adding water brought out chocolate raisins, brandy butter, stem ginger, nectarines, plum skins and incense. The big taste offered a barrage of orange barley sugars, chocolate, raisins, mint, woody spices and tannins. It developed into old Baco style Armagnac and Christmas cake with some smoke at the end. Previously in an ex-bourbon hogshead.