Nose: Preserved and dried fruits (figs, dates, cherries, dried apple, raisin, prune, apricot, peach). Coffee, chocolate, roasted nuts and marzipan all soaked in gallons of sweet sherry. It’s like a trifle made with plum pudding or Christmas cake instead of sponge cake. Deep syrupy honeyed aromas, golden syrup, treacle and a little sulphur. The cask is hugely apparent but it’s such a rich and luxurious whisky you just have to surrender and love it. With a little water there are aromas of mint and menthol. Palate: An eruption of sweet fruit! Tropical fruit juice concentrate, fruit salad, honey. Again there is a little sulphur but it’s trivial and just adds depth and complexity. In the development there are plums and peaches, almonds and walnuts and a lot of sweet sherry. This really does develop into a mouthful of boozy Christmas pudding. The texture is good with a pleasant weight that matches the intense flavours. Finish: Medium/Long. Sweet, lingering dark fruit and sherry. This could be criticized as being a two-dimensional whisky, what with its intense cask-dominated presence, but I think there is more going on than first meets the eye. Initially you are broadsided by a fusillade of aroma and flavor, all seemingly derived from the cask, but although the cask is unquestionably the obvious personality it is the Glenlivet spirit that is providing structure and all the excellent fruit profile. You could think of this as a very fine spirit whose characteristics are being magnified many times over by the cask while the cask adds it’s own colour in equal amount. I recently presented this at a tasting event where I placed it as the third pour on the sheet following Glenlivet Illicit Still 12, which in turn followed core-range Glenlivet 12. In this context there was a clear progression from the consumer-market whisky (coloured, chill-filtered, 40% and refill-cask matured) through to this cask-strength specimen presented in all its raw beauty, but most importantly the distinctive aroma and flavor of Glenlivet was detectable in all three drams. This is very enjoyable at its cask-strength of 56.4% but a small dash of water opens the dram very nicely, and with a little rest to recover after reduction the profile becomes easier and more enveloping, if losing a fraction in intensity. This is a wonderfully cosy night-time dram. Some people have identified a sulphur presence in this whisky but I did not find it to be objectionable, and it disappears almost completely with reduction. Sulphur is normally present in all whisky and sherry anyway and in my experience a really unpleasant sulphur taint from a bad cask is rarely encountered, and certainly not what I got here. This was a limited release (as is everything from the Scotch Malt Whisky Society) comprising 598 bottles, and it would be almost impossible to find now except through auction sites. “Excellent” : 88/100 (4.5 stars)