Rating: 10/23 N: Quite light. Difficult to make out. I get some sweet cereal and some cardboard. Little else is happening here though. P: It's very light and smooth with a clear youthfulness, an odd bitter backing, and a big cereal presence that combines with some mineral stream water sweetness to develop the sweet side. This is amazingly uncomplex and not very appealing frankly. I put it somewhere beneath Arran 10 and BenRiach 10. There is a light hint of some sort of fruit and some spices do eventually come out, though they bring some harshness. I briefly get a nice hint of orange. After reading the Distiller tasting, maybe I get a slight hint of brine and lemon, as well as a substantial floral bit that comes with a little herbal flavor that could be potpourri. The sweet wizened apples and tarring grass though? Sadly, I can't detect them. There is some grass in with the cereal, but the sweetness makes the cereal flavor dominate. F: Some of that slightly oily bitterness lingers along with a lot of cereal that loses sweetness as it goes along, really not that great. This tastes somewhere between a 10 year old scotch and a grainy vodka. As the vodka, it's actually kind of interesting. As the scotch, it's terribly bland an unappealing. It isn't actively bad, but I'd rather not drink it. Between this and Sir Edward's 12, it's a tough call. It's also a tough call with Aberlour 12. If I had to make the call right now, I'd probably put this below Sir Edward's and above Aberlour - a frankly shocking result. I think that makes this worthy of a 9 or maybe 10. I think my initial inclination to give this a 9 was misguided and it's more of a 10. The light grain is very youthful, but it's at least a clean, smooth flavor without any flaws aside from youth and a bit much decent-quality alcohol. It even has a dash of complexity.