I’ve always appreciated Arran – but this one is my favorite expression yet. The nose is a total bouquet: floral, polished wood, and the scent that fills the room when you open up a new package of Albanese gummy bears. The palate’s notes are tantalizing. I taste raisins, dried pineapple, malty donut, salted melon, mangosteen, and drying heather. It boasts all this while being well integrated. It is luxuriant but not avant garde, cool but not eccentric. The finish blossoms, spreading like a sun-kiss, with a surprising hint of sea spray. This whisky is emblematic of why I can’t (and don’t want to) get away from single malt scotch. It amazes me how one single malt can be so different and uniquely its own compared to one that is produced just a quick ferry ride away in Campbeltown, for instance. Scotch has so much to offer; the land and the craft have so much to offer.