Nose: Ethanol, buttered toast with marmalade, green apples, pears, pencil shavings, new-mown hay, faint vanilla. Palate: Smooth, soft honeyed arrival that gains some brisk spice as it unfolds, but the spices fade away as quickly as they appeared. In the development there are cereal and generic fruity notes along with an odd, mildly metallic flavour in the background. This is, however, low-key and like the spicy notes it is gone almost as soon as you notice it. Finish: Oh? There was a finish? Sorry, I must have blinked and missed it. Best described as “light, inoffensive and fleeting”. This whiskey is surprisingly reminiscent of Johnnie Walker Red Label (nose them together if you don’t believe me). Like JW Red it can easily be criticized as lacking poise, complexity and so on, however this is to miss the point. It’s an affordable bottom-shelfer, and a perfectly serviceable one at that. It is at its best neat with a dash of water or an ice cube as a quaffing whiskey. Surprisingly, it does not work so well as a mixer. It disappears entirely in coffee or cocktails, is barely noticeable in tea, and is actively unpleasant with cola where the metallic note on the palate is amplified into sharp bitterness. “Adequate” : 71/100 (2 stars)