Tastes

Aroma is pleasant with plenty of spice and sweet notes to pair with the oak and biscuity ones, but carries this light medicinal note that I can’t quite get around; Palate is a close duplicate of the aroma but with a bigger hit of that medicinal cherry/cough syrup note which sits evenly with the bigger oak, slight acetone, spice and sweet driven notes; Finish is my favorite aspect with the caramel-toffee-cocoa-butterscotch dark sweets note dragging through the spice and oak.

Aroma is warm, darkly fruity and sticky sweet but comes through a bit light and even with water isn’t fully expressive – a tad muted; Palate is warm and a touch ashy but is a solid, heavily sherried, Highland Park profile that’s become quite deep and expressive as it’s opened up; Finish mirrors the palate on the dark fruitiness but picks up a slight touch of herbal notes.

Aroma is not unpleasant but it’s not earth-shattering either, rather basic, but on the good side of basic, with its delivery of fruity and malty aromas; Palate is also light with malty, fruity and baked sweets notes – again, not bad but light and without dramatic complexity; Finish is soft and sweet and my favorite part of this Scotch.

Aroma opens to Honey Nut Cheerios after the initial apricot bomb pours out; Palate basically follows the same lines with minor deviations; Finish quickly turns to dried apricots and lingers just long enough. It’s light and a tad watery in its delivery, but not bad.

Aroma is leathery and oaky dry and spicy rustic with a big fruity kicker that picks up a light farmy quality as it opens; Palate looses some of the oak and the sweet notes, especially the cocoa, kick up giving impressions of chocolate-covered cherries and oranges amongst the nuts, oak and spice; Finish fades sweetly and pleasantly but all too quickly.

Aroma is exactly what you want in a heavily oaked bourbon that gets balanced with bold and complex sweet profiles; Palate follows the same track with some bolder peanut and spice notes; Finish is a tad underwhelming but carries a nice balance of oak and sweetness. I could sniff and sip this all day any day.

Aroma is heavily oaked and I’m oddly not loving it or the way all the other darkly sweet, fruity and spicy notes float under it; Palate comes together in a way that makes me think of alcoholic trail mix; Finish dissipates quickly moving from trail mix to dry oak. It’s not knocking my socks off, but it is perfectly enjoyable, and I’m a tad sad about that…

Aroma is a balanced delivery of drier rustic notes and stickier sweet notes that pulls the fruity, nutty, spicy, leathery, oaky profile together; Palate is a bit sweeter but stays the balanced course; Finish fades from fruity sweet to darkly sweet to nutty and oaky far too quickly. It’s good, but it’s “standard good” for an ECBP.

The aroma starts out heavy and almost inky, but after a few minutes in the glass it blossoms to this intensely rich, dark, funky and powerful aroma that runs from dark fruit to sweets to oily-sooty-wax and back; Palate runs the same path but pulls up more herbal and tar notes that further darken this whisky, pulling it into a nexus of heavy dark notes; Finish is one of the most expressive and long running I’ve had in a while. This is everything you want from a sherried Ledaig.

Aroma is deeply layered with sweet and earthy notes that scream what it is: sherried Ledaig; Palate is shockingly complex with flavors that run across the map from earthy to sweet to savory and salty; Finish is lovely and I want the smoked cocoa aspect to never end. I’m a big fan of this whisky.