Tastes

Having had the original non-cask strength, and this is a much more refined, balanced dram. Nose is cherrywood-smoked bacon, brown sugar, ground cinnamon, orange candy, and lots of smoke. The whiskey is a smoked with three parts cherrywood, beachwood, and peat, and the palate shifts between each of the three in that order, finally setting on a non-medicinal peat note with a mesquite barbecue at the end. In spite of the peat, it drinks more like a German rauchbier instead of an Islay scotch (it's actually out of a craft distillery with locations in Bowling Green and Nashville). Certainly an improvement over the original (which I still liked) which I thought had a bit of chalkiness to it I found distracted enough to keep it from being what it was meant to be. This has no such defects.