Nose: Oak cask - that's the first note - old oak cask, and that aroma permeates everything else on the nose. It's a rich, almost funky aroma of dark fruits, stone fruits, nuts, berries, toffee, wine, dark honey and old leather trousers (!), but everything has been aged almost to the point of decomposition. I don't think you could let this sit in the casks for one month more before it fell apart. There's a singular mustiness about the nose that you either love or hate, and after a while the aroma tends to fall into a brown-sugar amalgum. Palate: There is this thing that old Irish whisky does that transports you away on a wave of silvery, satiny, glistening cereal flavours and it happens here in spades. Peaches and apricots, mangoes, guava and soursop on the arrival, served on a day-old barley-meal trencher with caramel sauce. The texture is silken, velvety and gripping from the oak presence. Slightly drying and oaky as it evolves, very elegant and even more dry towards the finish with an autumn-leaf/tobacco character. Finish: Medium. Dry, almost astringent, dark chocolate and oak. The aftertaste is all dark chocolate and funky mustiness. An interesting and slightly unusual nose coupled with one of the most indulgent palates I've tasted. There is nothing demure about this whisky - it's Mae West dancing to Peter Gabriel's Sledgehammer as covered by Madonna. Yummy and singular stuff. I remarked in my review of Bushmills 16 that it was the first Bushmills that I had tasted that I really liked, and this is definitely the second, but to be honest it's in firm second place behind the 16. There is something that tries too hard about this whisky. I very much enjoyed tasting it but whereas I'd buy a bottle of the 16 at $120, I wouldn't be seeking out a bottle of this at the asking price of $240. It's wonderful, almost mandatory to taste, but not something to own, particularly given the penny-pinching proof. I'm rating it as equivalent to the 16 year old expression, but for completely different reasons, and in my opinion the official Distiller score here is amusingly doe-eyed and inflated. Tasted from a 30ml sampler. "Very Good" : 85/100 (4 stars)