As with ardbeg in general, the color is surprisingly pale. The nose is quite strong though with lots of smoke and peat mixed with some great umami and some surprising menthol and pine. There still nice sweetness on the nose with plenty of vanilla coming in along with a bit of light toffee scent. The complexity just in the nose is delightfully engaging and the scents are great with a nice balance - though the menthol and light pine are probabaly hit or miss (they're interesting at least). The palate is shockingly smooth and sweet with a rounded richness that brings in a lot of smoke before moving toward peat and emphasizing the numbing menthol a bit more. Although it's very smooth at this ABV, this isn't a watery whiskey - this is the good kind of smooth. There's some toffee to the sweetness. The flavors pretty much land and the complexity swirls, though it's generally subtle - about on par with Johnnie Walker Green in that regard. It tastes very good though - clearly better than Glenturret 29. There's a lot of chocolate in here and also probabaly some salted licorice, but more on the fresh side than that usual dark licorice flavor (maybe it includes some fennel as the bottle claims). This could have some more overt complexity with flavors making clear statements, but in it's smooth form, this is a very sippable whiskey with a few interesting notes in the menthol, licorice, and pine divisions. It's really good. Oak comes in on the finish as the smoke smolders, leaving some of the wood unburnt, but still affected by the fire. The mouthfeel is moderate - a nice place for it to be since it isn't so light that it seems watered down or so viscous that it seems like syrup was added. This isn't one of those few whiskeys that I'm going to track down at substantial effort and buy at high cost, but it is quite enjoyable. It's sweeter than expected and that's fairly nice, though a bit odd (I sort of don't know what to make of it). I've been hovering around an 18 for a while, but the more I drink it, the more I appreciate the smoothness and balance even though it doesn't have that complexity and punch of an interesting flavor that I really love. I'm pretty tempted to move this up to a 19 because I gave the Springbank 10 a 19 and I think this is more mature, but I'm not quite prepared to do that. It's very good though. Surprisingly, it becomes harsher with water. Unfortunately, the subtleties also fade away. I don't think it's actually a 19. I'm a fan though. Just not at the price.