Rating: 18/23 This is probably going to be my main basis for comparison in this Springbank review saga. Springbank 12 Cask Strength is a bit of an outlier in the line and my last dregs of Springbank 10 have been so massively aerated that I don't think they're at all representative of any reasonable Springbank experience. N: Vegetal, then herbal, then farmyard, then smoke. Faintly meaty with a tad of sweetness later on - like ham, or maybe that's just the malt coming through. There's some grass and a little bit of toasted grain. That blends into some slightly bold wood that has a hint of cinnamon. This is quite interesting and appealing, but not as well balanced as I'd expected and it has less going on too. P: This is much more balanced than the nose with much more complexity and some more depth too! It's hard to capture what all is happening here. I get vanilla with cinnamon, caramel, and brown sugar. Before that though, I taste a waxiness with dry grass, a bit of toasted grain, and some mellow smoke. There's a syrupy yet tart apple cider flavor on occasion (I'm guessing that's oloroso coming through because there's a dash of nuttiness as well). And there's always this layer of mature, dry wood, with an occasional faint paperiness. Faint mineral notes that have a suggestion of dungeness crab as well. I think that's really a bit of stray iodine though. Wow, now that I've noticed it, I really taste that oloroso tartness and nuttiness. I stand by my statements about the complexity and depth of the palate relative to the nose at the beginning, but I recant my statement about the balance; the nose is definitely more balanced than this is. F: Dry with vegetal, herbal, lightly nutty notes. A base of dry, aged wood sits mellowly underneath it all. Yeah, I definitely get that oloroso in this finish. - Conclusion - Side by side, this tastes a lot more mature than Glen Scotia 15 (16), but also less approachable. I would not recommend this as an intro scotch. Bruichladdich Bere Barley 2009 (17) has a very different profile, but it also has a well-defined personality that competes well with this. I'm giving the win to this and setting the floor of its rating range at 17. Springbank 18 (2018) is much more refined, balanced, deep, and maybe even complex than this is. Although the finishing here is fun, it's clearly excessive. I would take the Springbank 18 any day. Considering the finishing here (well, it might just be strong barrel flavor, not actual finishing), I think Cadenhead's Tullibardine 25 (1993) (a low 19) is a good comparison. This is more complex and initially balanced, but the sherry starts to take over as it progresses and the depth ends up being solid but not that impressive. I'm not sure that the Tullibardine is deeper, but it kind fo has its thing that it's doing and it's doing it well. I lean more toward the Tullibardine than toward this. Lismorer 21 (19) also strikes me as more coherent than this. Its edges are a bit over-softened, but it has a good funky profile with plenty going on. That finishing here is just too aggressive and there isn't enough other stuff to make up for it. I think I have to go was an 18. This is a great dram, but I must admit that I was hoping for something more. Coming back for that one final sip a couple of days later, side by side with Lismore 21, the two are close. I like the higher proof and crisper flavors this has, but the oloroso is just very prominent and the Lismore manages to be even more complex and far more deep than this is, despite being more muddled. I'm sticking with an 18. I think most people would probably like this better than I do. With all of the home blending I do, there are certain flavors that jump out to me as things that I've crafted at home and worked hard to smoothen out and/or hide. That strong oloroso flavor is definitely one of them. Thank you @ctbeck11 for giving me this sample to include in my grand Springbank face-off!