Nose: Red berries, vanilla biscuits, and a woody note but it's not the aroma of oak cask - it's more like freshly sawn planks. There is a brisk spirity quality to the nose. Palate: Sweet winey notes turning almost instantly very dry with heavy tannins. As it develops it turns a little towards sweetness and evolves flavours of nuts (almonds, hazelnuts), sour cherry, unripe pear, unripe greengage, orange oil and white pepper but it is always dominated by the cask tannins. The texture is pleasant. Finish: Medium. Mildly spicy, trailing into a woody, winey aftertaste. Milk chocolate lingers on the tongue. The nose is slightly floral, but only a trace. The overarching aroma is of young red wine cask. Everyone seems to mention milk chocolate in connection with this whisky but I only noticed it on the finish as a relatively strong aftertaste. There is an overall woody quality but like many light whiskies conditioned in wine casks it's thin and "planky". There is no barrel char to perform extractive maturation, and it's young to boot, so the aroma and taste of lightly toasted oak is never far away. There is a certain resemblance between this and G.Rozelieurs Blue Label and also Hellyer's Road Pinot Cask matured whisky, but both of those expressions have more depth. This whisky does not have a demonstrative personality and you need to let it breathe for a while in the glass to open up. For that matter, the bottle level needs to get down to well below the shoulder before it becomes really attractive. A dash of water definitely improves this whisky but it is very easy to drown so don't overdo it. An average but unmemorable single malt that is not of a style I particularly enjoy. I would neither buy it again nor recommend it and it has not inspired me to taste anything else by this distillery. If you want to taste red wine cask maturation done with style pay three times the price and buy any Longrow Red - it's more than worth the expense. "Average" : 78/100 (2.75 stars) ------------- Addendum: After posting this I looked over the official review and previous member reviews which mostly indicate that this used to have greater presence and richness of presentation. I don't know whether this expression has changed, but it seems like it may have. I certainly wouldn't rate it at anything like 87/100.