Nose is clean and fruity, with cherries, a lot of pears, and the perception of rich sweetness, like a good fruit cocktail. Give it a swirl and light honey joins the mix, but try as I might I can’t find much else. It’s quite nice, but certainly not earth shaking. Palate shows off those sherry casks, with a warm, rich, oily sweetness that coats from front to back. Honey, pears, fuji apple, raisins and dates lead surprisingly quickly to drying astringency and then a clean close with just the slightest of cherry briefly lingering. Take a larger sip and swirl it around and you’ll find the same fruits, but also a dash of sage and basil, and the cherry is more like Luxardo than maraschino. I started this as a solid 4.0, but a prolonged tasting leads me to add another quarter. I wanted to go to 4.5 because it is really quite good, but then I remember this is a 25yr sherried single malt, and in that context it’s underwhelming. I’m happy I bought it, but my future purchases will be of the 10, 12, and 15, and the rest of this bottle will be shared with friends who are new to scotch.