Grangestone Highland Single Malt Sherry Cask Finish

EXPLORATION: The nose is so sour I think my glass might be unwashed. The sherry is distinct in the smell, along with some pepper, but I have trouble identifying the taste. Dry fruit. Bitter. Cereal? I'm not quite sure wtf I'm tasting tbh. Is this dram elusively complex? Or am I overthinking it? Probably the latter. EXHORTATION: Seek not, lest ye be in the market for tasting samplers from different barrel finishes.

The nose has scotch, but it is dominated by a strawberry fruit snacks scent that is actually pretty appealing. The palate is disappointingly light with scotch coming in and having too light of a fruit flavor to make it taste at all mature. The flavor is quite like somebody soaked some strawberry fruit snacks briefly in some young scotch. It's super watery and really not appealing, though it isn't too actively bad. The nose is tremendously sweet like strawberry mild with caramel that has been tainted by scotch. The palate is surprisingly watery with a definite sweet strawberry flavor to it that is too strong, but is not viscous. Scotch is present on the palate, but it is super generic and the whole thing mostly tastes like a watery strawberry cocktail. It's weird and bad. Grangestone Rum is better and so is Grangestone Bourbon. This is somehow some of the worst scotch I have ever tasted in that it is nothing like the finished product should be. It isn't wholly unpalatable, but it is a really weird and inappropriate flavor. The nose is strawberry with some sulfury grass. The palate has some richness and a hint of spiciness and is less watery than I had initially thought. There's a fairly nasty rotting flavor underlying the whole thing and it isn't particularly complex.

It wasn’t bad. The sherry cask gives it a bit of an overpowering taste. Kinda has a smoky taste but with a tiny bit of water it subdued that sherry/smoky taste and made it better.

N- sherry, cinnamon, raisins, wood P- sherry, figs, citrus F- dark fruits, peppery oak