Thanks @cascode for curating the best two offerings from the Dewars ‘Smooth’ range. Aside from loathing the use of the word smooth for anything but sleight of hand or topography; I am grateful to get to try my first Dewars liquids, allbeit a smooth one. Fitting that I should move onto these having just finished a bottle of Aberfeldy (12) which I understand is the back bone of a Dewars blend. N: Malt heavy with a sweet fruity tingle/burn. I am not that well acquainted with tequila or mezcal so I don’t know if I am noting anything from the cask. There is something vaguely vegetal and crisp in here (like a green bell pepper) with an undertone of herbal smoke or ash. P: A little thin but heading towards creamy. Immediately hit by a smoky honey with dark caramel. This is followed up by some more of the bell pepper but also cracked black pepper. I think I find the tequila as the interplay of vegetal peppery spice and sticky honey-caramel. I get very little out of this. F: Short. Surprisingly creamy, like oaked chardonnay, a got dose of more vegetal pepper spice and some grainy ash. Erm. I honestly don’t know what to say about this. It feels like generic blended malt but with a vaguely interesting vegetal and peppery character to set it apart from bottom shelf generic drams. I’m not fully convinced I know enough about mezcal or Dewars to pass any kind of judgement but for me, its a forgettable but perfectly acceptable, ‘meh’. Thanks again Overlord @cascode Distiller whisky taste #248 [Pictured here with a replica (orange) reconstruction (brown) of the original Austalopithecus afarensis skull, better known as; Lucy. At 3.2 million years old Lucy (or A.L. 288-1) was discovered in Hadar, Ethiopia in 1974. Her jaw shares features with both apes and other early hominids. Although the brain size was relatively small, the rest of the skeleton indicated she walked upright, supporting the idea that bipedalism preceded the development of large brains. And why ‘Lucy’? The night she was found the paleontological team celebrated in camp with a cassette of Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds playing on repeat.]