SMWS 66.233 'A left hook out of nowhere ...' 9 years 61%

First impressions included notes of dry-roasted peanuts, smoky bacon crisps, natural tar extract and umami seasoning powders. Beyond that we also found rum funk, sooty coal scuttles and smoked finger limes – a superbly fun and entertaining jumble of influences. Water brought smoked olive oil, sooty coal scuttles, aniseed distillate, camphor and burning sage.

The neat palate was surprisingly massive! A serious and searing punch of pure, ashy, iodine-drenched peat. There was a farmyard meaty denseness too but overall you could be forgiven for feeling you'd just woken up on the south shore of Islay.

Even with dilution it was still throwing off all manner of influences such as bacon frazzling in mustard oil, roof pitch, hot red chilli, disinfectant and billowing kiln smoke. All smoke, sinew, tar and muscle, this was matured in a bourbon barrel for seven years before being transferred to a refill Trinidadian rum barrel. 

Ex-bourbon barrel / Refill Trinidadian rum barrel