Sometimes we drink whiskey to taste whiskey, and sometimes we drink whiskey for other reasons. You know the reasons. I opened this bottle on a day where I did not care to notice whether the flavor on the front of my tongue differed when holding this juice against the roof of my mouth. I did not care if water or ice made any pleasant changes to the finish. In short: I did not give this bottle the respect it deserved. I did not like this whiskey, and at the time I was a pretty big fan of Rabbit Hole. Heigold was impressive, Boxergrail was a solid rye, and Daringer was good, although not even top 5 in the sherry-finished space from a “bang for your buck” perspective. Nonetheless, I labeled this product as “whiskey to drink after I’ve had a few.” It wasn’t until today, near the bottle’s end, that I gave it a true chance. It’s delicious. Nose is sugar, leather, cedar, blackberries. Grape jam. Body is raspberry, jam, sugar, caramel apples, tea leaves. Finish is cinnamon, praline, more caramel apples. This is lovely, and I regret that I did not give this the time it deserved. My only guess to how this misconception happened is that this whiskey is very flavor dense. I genuinely get all those flavors, and I often don’t detect that much variance on a single pour. I can definitely see how drinking this quickly and recklessly could make you merge a lot of these flavors into a palate that occupies the “generic bourbon” zone. I have learned my lesson, and will be sipping the rest of this bottle slowly and respectfully.