Absolutely lovely.  The mild hints of peaty smoke and salt enhance the dominant fruity orange notes.  An excellent oily and full flavored body with a refreshing finish, this dram is dangerously delicious.  This is the kind of bottle that you could inadvertently finish without even realizing it.

This was absolutely stunning.  It was wonderfully complex.  It was not overly sweet, overly funky, or overly influenced by the oloroso.  It was a goldilocks dram, hitting so many different notes so well. 

Mild and tame; the Peat Faerie is the most restrained of all mythical peat creatures.

Ao, one of Suntory’s latest product launches, leverages the monolithic size of the company to blend together whiskies from every corner of the globe (where Suntory at least partially owns a distillery).      According to Suntory, in Japanese Ao means blue and blue is the color of the water that connects each of these distilling regions to one another.  In Tahitian one meaning of the word Ao is world, so in my opinion the label makes more sense if we just pretend as though Suntory intended it to be read in Tahitian.

Holy cow, I want more of this.

It is a solid pick up for any fan of Port Charlotte and is priced extremely competitively compared to independently bottled single cask Port Charlottes.  This ‘small batch’ Port Charlotte has a unique and enjoyable flavor profile.

My notes became far more positive in each subsequent tasting session.  Some time resting in the bottle, remembering to add a bit of water, and perhaps the nature of the day’s weather all changed the experience just a bit and allowed additional complexity to come through in the glass.

This is everything I wanted out of the Highland Park 18 Year but did not find.  This was full bodied, full flavored, and fully satisfying.  It had an intensity and clarity of flavor that the standard 18 was lacking and an excellent chewy oily body.

No Name is a salty maritime dram laced with tar and coal soot.  It is definitely peatier than the Peat Monster, but is still restrained— far from being a peat bomb— the teenage peat and additional of creamy highland malt round off some of the phenolic bite.

The bottle is delicious and thought provoking, a worthy pick up for anyone looking to explore American Single Malts, barley, yeast, or sherry casks.

It is a dinosaur, fun to see in a museum, but probably not the ideal animal to have as a pet.

The spectrum of earthy, mineral, and clay notes on this were as stunning as they were unique.  I have never had anything quite like the burning cow paddy I found inside this bottle— the sort of savory, musty, earthy, grassy smoke.  It was delicious, dung and all.

Maybe this dram was a unicorn, maybe a snowflake, whichever metaphor works, it was amazing, it was unique, and while I am sad I won’t be having another pour of it, I know there are always other fish in the sea.

For my money the best Travel Retail Exclusive bottle you can buy.

I love the funky profile of Ledaig.  This is the perfect dram to sit back with and explore the layers of funky umami that just roll out.  It is savory and salty with just enough sweet wood spices to keep you looking, trying to figure out how to describe the profile.

No one could blame you if you took a dram of this for breakfast.  It has cereals, fruits, and milk— everything you need to get your day started.

Not the worst blended whisky I have ever had— nor the worst grain heavy mash-bill.  It’s not very complex and the whole of the Amrut single malt lineup towers over it in terms of the depth and complexity of the flavor profile.  While it was alright, I won’t be searching it out again any time soon.  I think I’ll stick to my Amrut single malts.

The bottle has grown on me, slowly.  Now that we’re about two thirds of the way through with our first bottle we’ve started grabbing it out of the cupboard a little more often.  It is still not a bottle we pull out with any reverence, it’s more like a bottle we have two of and might as well polish off.  I think on the whole I still prefer the Quarter Cask and the travel retail PX Cask.