I'm really glad I kept both the Longrow 18, 2018 and this Springbank 18, 2015 edition back from auction. Mr Excellent has nailed a lot of the flavour descriptors. Oily, ripe banana, coconut, pepper, cinnamon, and more going on. I had a think a while back what my favourite distilleries were. A fair number have dropped back due to quality/crap cheap NAS (Talisker) and poor blending (Glendronach) from my top few. Springbank (incl. Longrow, Hazelburn) however I now declare is solidly top spot. Have they let me down, yes. Particularly an over sulphured bomb. There is only one bottle of any spirit i have bought out of the however many hundreds i have returned and that was a massively sulphur bombed Hazelburn 14 Sherry casked. I LOVED the first one I had but man the next two... One i left open for 3 or 4 months, barely drank any and gave the rest away. The next year I was like na this is even worse so I returned it. And this is from a man who loves a bit of sulphur e.g. Mortlach. Anyhow they are my no. 1 as despite sometimes severe quality control issues they always have best intentions and cam deliver some absolute stunners at a (21 and 25 year aged stmts aside) fair price. It's not in their DNA to ramp up production, go mass mkt and pump out crap. If they pump out crap it's still good intentions (just sloppy quality ctl - seriously do they taste each run??). Anyhow let it open for a few weeks and enjoy. Another SB stunner. Update: Months later and close to bottle kill i'm raising this to a ultra rare 4.75. I've bought hundreds of bottles and had thousands of samples and it's extremely rare I see a bottle all the way through. Mostly i give it away as i either go off it, it degrades and or i get bored. Not this one, this I will mourn. I love the flavour profile, complexity and most importantly perfect balance that oxegen and time just has not degraded. There maybe drams I have thought more special than this but very few that have consistently delivered and kept me wanting to go back to every single time..never once have I felt not in the mood for this dram.