Mac. By Brookies

Appearance: Transparent golden amber. Aroma: Oily, nutty and syrupy. A note like butterscotch. [The dry glass aroma is macadamia shells] Palate: Like drinking neat golden syrup. Over time some nutty notes emerge from the dense fog of almost molasses-like syrup. There is a diabetic coma in every dram. I first tasted this a couple of weeks ago at the Cape Byron Distillery where it is made, and I really, *really* wanted to like it and support a local product. But I have to be honest - this stuff sucks. It is astonishingly, unremittingly, uncompromisingly SWEET with a profile of thick sugary syrup that completely occludes all nuance at first tasting. The only way you can appreciate this is by taking a good gulp and waiting until the tidal wave of initial sweetness subsides. Only then does any appreciation of the subtle macadamia nuttiness become possible. I guess this will be successfully marketed to mixologists who will do something creative with it, but for my part I'd really like the see the distillery go back to scratch and re-develop this liqueur. It has the possibility to be something really interesting, but that cloying syrupy sweetness must go! In the name of science I just slipped a cube of ice into my glencairn and topped up the pour of this liqueur to see what cooling does. Very little as it turns out - exactly the same profile, but it gets colder - that's it. Maybe I'm being too harsh - use it in some form where it will be diluted and yes, it has potential, but I still don't ever see the nutty character coming to the fore as it is. The tour guide who poured this for us compared it to Frangelico. No, it's not, not by a country mile. "Inferior" : 65/100 (1.5 stars)

Sweet, macadamia, wattleseed, coffee, oily