Russell's Reserve Small Batch 6yr Rye Nose: salty fruit salad, very ripe figs and very ripe warm kiwis, or maybe some Fuji apple banana mandarin orange mix. Either way it's ripe and fruity in an inviting and festive way. No alcohol notes. Taste: right away you taste the salty fruit salad, with some dates thrown in, and then comes the rye, big time. The aromatic and bitter rye overtones poignantly expressed in this spirit present as caraway and white carrot, with a savory and pleasantly vegetal sweetness balanced with a similar quality of bitterness. Finish: lingering and bitter, herbal, and much like having chewed on fenugreek and bishop's weed and their seeds, with a "parched" kind of dry warmth. Here in the aftertaste is where the dry and lightly charred oak shows through after the roar of other pleasant flavors, with a bit of allspice peeking from behind the curtain at the very end... and then an encore of rustically-floral goldenrod, Japanese knotweed, and Queen Anne's lace. This drink is all across the board and hits just about every Rye flavor note in cadence, from salt to fruit to cereal to herbal to aromatic to wood to spice to floral. A real treat with incredibly full flavor, easy to drink, an equally easy to chew. At LEAST 4.5/5 I will always have to have a bottle of this on my shelf, especially at under $50/bottle.