Peaty nose, with some briney notes. I can definitely get some of the red fruit aromas from the wine, but they don't jump right out. I get maybe a mix of cherry or plum as well as red apple. The taste has a peaty, dry smoke, but it's not as strong as some other Ardbeg releases. I feel like Ardbeg often has a bit of a vegetal character, and I'm having trouble finding it here, perhaps the fruity wine notes cancel it out. I am also getting a baked apple flavor as it sits in the glass, although it's not overly sweet. In the finish, I get some salt and pepper and maybe some pine needles or pine resin. I also get some mellower red fruit. I feel like the wine fruit, maybe tames the Ardbeg a bit, for better and worse. They play nice together... maybe too nice, considering that this is one of the Islay heavyweights. The finish is quite lingering- it's dry spicy smoke with peppery waves... but I think some of the pepper may be coming from the wine as much as from the whiskey. If anything, this is smoother and quite a bit easier drinking than I had expected, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but possibly dangerous to sobriety and pocketbook. I like this. I'm not sure that I love it, considering this was well north of $100. Supernova is better, and the price isn't that much different. I will say that the pinot noir brings something interesting and different, and it actually works pretty well, but it's not going down in history as a classic and celebrated combo. If anything, I'd actually recommend buying a few moderately priced bottles of pinot noir if you are going to invest in this, if you don't have a lot of previous wine experience. I'm a whiskey drinker first and foremost, but I've polished off plenty of bottles of pinot over the years, and I think a lot of the interesting aspects of this whiskey would be lost on someone who didn't already have some wine background. Actually, this gets me thinking how Ardbeg might taste after some aging in a really robust red cask. Perhaps that is the magic that could take a project like this from good to magical. I gave myself a small pour of Uigeadail just to compare, and the peat is definitely toned down here compared to the Uigeadail. I also don't really get the classic Ardbeg smoked meat here, but it is front and center in the Uigeadail. It's a black sheep and it works, for sure, but I feel like it sacrifices some of it's origin to strike an interesting, milder balance.