Tonights tasting is North Star Spirits Supersonic Mach 3. This is a limited-edition blended malt using whisky taken from sherry casks and bottled at 55% ABV. Only 777 bottles were produced. N: Ok, no doubt about it we have a sherry cask but by Cthulhu this is thick with waxy, oily, leathery wood notes and indulgent toffees and brown sugar. This is a wood driven, heavily wood driven profile. The sherry is some jammy blackcurrant or figs and sultanas, but I’ll be damned if I can hold onto it long… wood. With time a little spice note like incense or hard woody spices come out. P: Full and somewhat oily with a fair hit of burn. The sherry is there again, but its masked by the oak. Spicy wood notes give cinnamon, tannic clove, and maybe nutmeg. With successive sips the burn subsides and the texture moves into a slightly sticky terrain. But with that stickiness is the mulled red fruits and warm Christmas jumper that is a sherried palate. Sweet, safe, and dependable with figs, sultanas, and a little menthol/aniseed. F: Medium. Tannic oak, burnt brown sugar, plump sultanas and a little orange zested mulled plums/figs. I was anticipating a sherry monster, and in someways this is. But, I’d go as far to say that this is two whiskies in one. On the one hand the sherry profile of sweet fruits, spicy wintery Christmas imagery and bright zingy pops of spice and zest are what you’d expect. But, my word thats a lot of wood. It’s not subtle, and at times its enjoyable but its also big and theres no hiding from it. I realise in recent tastings I have been finding more enjoyment in delicate floral, herbal, and light fruit notes than I have whiskies that hide behind heavy wood. I want the malt, I want the character of the distillery, not a bodega in Spain. Still, this is a curious dram well worth a heavy splash or even a bottle. Thank you very kindly @cascode for yet another generous and challenging dram. Distiller whisky taste #272 [Pictured here with a rather spectacular garnet-staurolite phyllite from somewhere in Brazil. Things you need to know about this rock: it used to be a mud, it got cooked to around 650 degrees celsius during some kind of mountain building episode, the muds rearranged into beautiful gems crystals and a very finely layered crystalline rock, someone used it to make a pretty photo of some whisky].