Nose: Lightly resinous wood, cedar, some vanilla, a chocolate note. Malty and grainy and more satisfying than any other Auchentoshan I've nosed. There's a fresh white bread / madeira cake / panettone note along with bergamot and ginger. Pleasant and fresh rather than mature. Palate: The palate does not hold up to the promise of the nose. It's similarly fresh but the arrival is a simple combination of young cereal flavours, green grass and mild herbs that tastes very young. Had I tasted this blind I would never have guessed that it was 21 years old. There are agreeable malty notes but no complexity and like every Auchentoshan I've tasted the wood influence seems intrusive. It's simultaneously juvenile and confused. The texture is OK, a little oily and silken. Finish: Short. Ginger cake, pine resin and some grassy notes. I have to confess that I'm not at all fond of Auchentoshan whisky. There is a particular note in their new-make spirit that reminds me of pine-tree sap and I find it permeates every aspect of all their expressions. When this is combined with cask influence the resinous note is amplified, and the more varied and complex the casking the worse it becomes for me. I'm sure that this is not a common perception as many folks enjoy this distillery's offerings. It's probably some obscure association I have with a particular ester that triggers my resin-phobia. However once again I'm confounded by Auchentoshan. The nose is very pleasant, hardly commanding but time has muted the resin note considerably. However on the palate it's just a young and forgettable malt. There is nothing at all actively bad about it, but there is nothing that I could find that was worthy of high praise either. Tasted from a 30ml sample, thanks to @Soba45 for the tasting sample. It's not a whisky I would ever have bought as an experiment, particularly at what seems an unusually high price. "Average" : 79/100 (2.75 stars)