What can I say, I've become a bit hooked/obsessed with Kavalan and I finally broke down and made the less than smart financial decisions to pick this up for 417 bucks (ouch). Nose - At first I'm mostly getting vanilla over a fruity all be it on descriptive malt and a good bit of alcohol. I added water and to be honest it's not really opening up much. Time seems to be the magic on the nose. It's now fruity, very clearly a distinct sherry note with some vanilla. Taste - I'm not an expert on tehse manzanilla casks, I've really only had a few bottles with some maturation, that I'm aware of, with them. They are sweeter than Oloroso but they aren't the same kind of sweetness of a PX. The taste is sweet with some spice. I'm not getting a distinct sherry like note, just a general sweeter whisky with a lot of fruity elements but I'm not able to really drill in. Added water and I'm still struggling with this one. There's berries up front, then it moves into some spices. There's something here muting the whisky, it's like the sherry wants to explode into this sweet candy note and then there's a bready oaky element coming in and bringing the sweetness down, bringing in some spice, and then leaving it with a long, but bitter finish. I think the problem with this one is that I came in really hoping for a dessert dram and that isn't this at all. The sweetness is a bit muted, the barrels are giving off some oak, the natural malts are much more hearty than perhaps I realized, and while the cask finishing really does shine (this is a sherry bomb for sure) the other elements here are far more in play than I'd expected and really than I'd noticed on some other pours from this series. I'm going 4 stars here but I'm debating 3.75. This is great whisky but it's not truly special. Still the cask strength, single barrel, sherry bomb qualities are working very well for me here. Will re-review - but this is going higher up, it's opened up a lot in the bottle. Likely a 4.5 but maybe 4.25.