N: Butter and caramel. Huge butter scent, actually: toasted butter in a cast iron skillet, buttered corn, buttered bread... Lavender, shaving soap, wood stain, strawberry, bacon soaking in maple syrup, black licorice, caramel coated red fruit. Plenty of ethanol, but doesn't feel quite up to the proof. Some wood scents: fresh cut lumber, sawdust, very distant campfire/burning wood. A really nice raspberry note develops after it's been in the glass for a bit. The raspberry tends to merge with the butter and maple syrup, soften it, and turn it all towards a raspberry vanilla cream. That, in turn, is punctuated with black licorice hits - which I would not have expected to be complementary to the raspberry, but it is here. It is an incredible nose. It comes across a little young and mildly harsh at times, but it really keeps giving and giving and giving. P: Caramel and vanilla first. Oak tannins, then both wood and ethanol burn. Straight drinks a bit too hot for my taste. Has that melt on the tongue feeling (ECBP has it too). Rocks glass, two cubes, just enough whiskey to float them, and then wait for them to melt - this seems to be where the palate works for me, but it blunts the nose, unfortunately. Cubes are good and melted now: caramel and vanilla are still there. Honey is added. A very raw feeling cinnamon joins - it's like how a cinnamon stick smells before it's ground down: full of potential. Raspberry returns, but all by its lonesome now. Black licorice, mint and menthol, some herbal tea notes. Still lots of oak flavor and bitter tannins. Letting it sit on the tongue a very long time - long enough to warm up - adds some baking spices, some bready, baked goods notes, a healthy dose of chocolate powder, and a hint of coffee. Finish is very long with cinnamon burn and tannin pucker sitting on the sides of your tongue for what feels like a couple of minutes after your last sip. Hint of chocolate and honey in there too. Almond and peanut are suddenly noticeable as the spice fades. Last note is a hoppy, herbal bitterness. Picked a big one for review #99. No idea what's going to be #100 yet. I have to say, on the whole, I don't really like this whiskey. The nose is incredible, but drinking it takes effort, planning, thought. If you ice it, as I did, then you lose a lot of the nose. Maybe experimenting with varying amounts of water would yield better results for both nose and palate, but I've got other whiskies to drink - I don't really care enough about this one in particular to try and draw out all its nuances. Neither do you, probably. I love uncut, cask strength, barrel proof, untouched, unadulterated, whatever-you-want-to-call-it whiskey. But this is one that probably could be improved if someone in-house, with lots of time to tinker (on the company dime, obviously), could find exactly the spot where the nose and palate work together as a cohesive whole. Is that cut down to 55%? 50%? 46%? I don't know, because I don't like math that much and, as stated above, don't care enough to figure it out for this one bottle in my collection. The point, ultimately, is that the barrel proof here is not doing this whiskey favors - it needs to be cut, likely at a very specific ratio, and Larceny (Heaven Hill) was kinda lazy in not doing that. Think about Russell's Reserve at 55% - why? Why not just barrel proof it? Because someone took the time to think about it, taste it, test it, and decided it was better when cut to some very specific degree. Same is true here, but Larceny decided to let you do that work (or not). I can see some people appreciating that. I can also see how that looks like an attempt to cash in on the barrel proof trend. Whatever it is, it worked. See Whisky Advocate, Winter 2020, p. 61. On the whole, I would pass on this at what I paid. At normal retail, maybe two bottles gets you a good shot at finding an excellent balance of water to whiskey with just enough left to enjoy. But I'd rather just drink another whiskey than put in that effort.