Opening a gratefully received pour of this French liquid I was obtrusively met by an aggressive spirit presence. Fifteen minutes to the side whilst clearing up after the finest roast chicken I’ve eaten in years and I am pleased to find a much more inviting dram ready to be sampled. I very much want to enjoy this, I think cognac casks are a highly interesting option for whiskies, so @cascode thank you kindly for this one. N: beautifully sweet pears, toasty grainy cereal, marzipan (unexpectedly delightful), really ripe banana, a dry leaf (tobacco?), and a suggestion of dried fruit. Big, bold, and complex. P: Moderate richness with a hint of oily presence. Nothing to write home about though. An abundantly youthful arrival marked by grainy cereals and quite a vegetal-leafy presence. Quite a lot of sweetness is present, like a thick syrupy fruit reduction with cherries and orange. There is a also a gristiness that built up with successive sips, like the dusty remnants of a bag of oats. F: Short. Latent spirit, nuttiness, and a gnats fart of smoke. Grist is what lingers the longest. An interesting entry from the French with plenty of room for growth and improvement. The nose is an aggressively complex opening. Not complex in the way of an erudite intellectual that has spent a life time adventuring to far flung corners of the earth. No. Complex, like someone just let a lion out in the middle of playground. I do not doubt that given time to mature this nose will be absolutely excellent. Thats where the enjoyment factor ends for me though. The palate is aggressively young with a grist driven profile that at times verges on acrid with a strong vegetal to spirit presence. It actually reminds me of a flavour note I was confused by in Loch Lomond Original (I cannot escape the grasp of the LL nightmare). The nose lies, thats my take away for this generously supplied highly interesting young whisky. Distiller whisky taste #164 [Pictured here with a hunk of lapis-lazuli from Sar-e-sang, Afghanistan. Not a mineral, but a rock, lapis-lazuli is an aggregate of minerals. The blue from the mineral lazurite, with additional brassy yellow pyrtie. These rocks have formed from limestones hydrothermally altered by circulating metamorphic fluids.]⁣