Nose: A vibrant red wine note. To best describe, it's a combination of rich, dark fruits including plum and fig. There is also a tart fruit note that comes across as both cranberry and blackberry. Included is effervescent spice, herbal essence, and barrel ding. Taste: Bold black pepper and sweet, spicy honey quickly explodes into a dense, sweet, smoked wood note. It tapers to a lingering sweet, spicy oil coating and the tingle of freshly cracked pepper. Later sips reveal herbal notes, black tea, dense caramel and brown sugar, and indiscriminate dark fruits beneath the dense wood note. Final notes: This is a tricky bottle for me to be decisive on, particularly due to a very polarizing nose and taste. I do like this whisky and would purchase again, but there are things that just fell below the mark I wanted. As someone that values taste over nose when drinking a whisky, I must say the nose on this whisky is wonderful. However, parts of the nose I badly wanted in the taste failed to show or fully reveal themselves. The fruits notes that finally snuck out on the taste were generic dark fruits that never developed into particular plums or figs that I found on the nose and the tart cran-blackberry just failed to show at all. I did love the combination of freshly cracked black pepper and sweet & spicy honey with the smoked wood note (mesquite?). It was fun and reminded me of a 4th of July BBQ. This would be a fun whisky to try in an old fashioned, as well as explore with the addition of water. Very interesting bottle overall.