Glenfiddich is something that I have had a few times over the years, and only twice with considered tasting thought here on Distiller. The various expressions have always struck me as perfectly fine. Just fine. Nothing special about them. So, it was with a certain amount of trepidation that I purchased a sample of this XX. Supposedly this XX (twenty) ”is a vatting of twenty different casks, including Port pipes, Sherry butts and first-fill Bourbon casks, each chosen by the brand’s twenty global ambassadors. A collaborative marketing exercise, each ambassador selected a cask from the distillery's warehouses that best represented their personality. The casks were then blended together to create a NAS, non-chill-filtered expression” All I am hearing is ‘marketing exercise’. Lets see how it holds up. N: A strong musty nose on pouring that a generous time opening in the glass has not dissipated. Sweet apples and pears with a certain floral character are slightly masked by spicy oak, aniseed. Some late furniture polish. P: Well that was unexpected: bright and very fruity. This is floral candy floss, and pear cider at first backed up with woody spice notes, vanilla, biscuit, marzipan. F: Long. Florals are dominant, some waxy-tannic undertones and what ultimately is a sweet and almost soapy mouthfeel. OK. There is a lot going on here. The nose feels like it could be excellent but it comes across as slightly out of focus, almost unmixed. The palate has some wonderful florals but they should be a suggestion, a delicate whisper. Instead this is like a mouthful of pot-pourri and its just too intense. The finish is strange, again it just feels muddled. There are rave reviews out there for this whisky, with Jim Murray giving it 95.5/100 in the 2019 Whisky Bible. Several other glowing reviews from notable names in the industry are easy to find. But no, I just don’t get it. This feels less like a project and more like the marketing team trying to keep the accountants happy in using up a bunch of left over barrels under the guise of a brains trust. It’s not that though it is just too many cooks in the kitchen if you ask me (which I realise, no one did). Distiller whisky tastes #303 [Pictured here with a garnet-staurolite schist from the Bohemian Massif of the Czech Republic. This rock represents the eastern end of a huge European mountain building episode called the Variscan Orogeny that occurred 380-280 million years ago during the assembly of the Supercontinent Pangea. This rock represents metamorphism of a muddy sediment at up to 570 degrees C and at up to 5 kbar of pressure. Only one cook in this kitchen; geology; and it cooked up a stonker] Glenfiddich running scores Glenfiddich 12: 3/5 Orchard Experiment: 2.75/5 Project XX: 2.5/5