Nose: Spirity to begin with, fresh and clean but also thin and weak. Rather like the nose of a close-to-bottom-shelf blended scotch. Malt, green apple, lemon zest with grassy spice notes in the background. The dry-glass aroma is all honey, surprisingly, but after several tastes I can't detect honey on the nose itself. Palate: Fruity and spicy on the arrival with cereal flavours reminiscent of white bread toast. Porridge and malt come to dominate as it develops but there is an overarching gingery spicy note throughout the palate and an accompanying touch of aniseed. The texture is on the thin side. Finish: Short. Malt flavours that are initially sweet and spicy but turn dry and almost bitter in the aftertaste. An uninspiring Irish single malt that compares poorly against considerably cheaper scotch blends. There is just not enough going on here to make this worthy of compliment - not actively bad, but you can do way better. It's not really satisfying as a sipping whisky and as a mixer it tends to disappear. It works best straight with a couple of rocks and a dash of soda water. My biggest complaint is that this is poor value for money. In Australia a bottle costs a couple of dollars less than Ardbeg 10. My cheap blended scotch of choice recently has been Ballantine's 12 year old, which is almost half the price but knocks this milquetoast contender onto the canvas with one punch. It's acceptable, with no real off-notes, but hardly recommended. The official rating here is very generous. "Adequate" : 73/100 (2.25 stars)