Nose: lovely peat, railway sleeper, cigarette ash, salt, burnt driftwood smoke, and a Barratt fruit salad sweet. Palate: salt, fresh citrus and tropical fruit, particularly tangy grapefruit and orange. Some smoke billows upward on a second wave after swallowing (what’s that called again?) Finish: dry coal dust with some tea and salty liquorice _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_- Last 16, Match 2: Kilchoman Machir Bay versus Ben Nevis 10yo After the cabbage and sulphur of the Ben Nevis here is a nose to enjoy. Score 1 for Kilchoman and I had to fight my bias for peaty whiskies so as not to award the bout immediately to the dram from Islay. Machir Bay also holds up well on the palate, but not in the same league as the beautiful play of salt and sweetness of the Ben Nevis. Hard to pick the better from the different finishes and I called it a draw, and so a draw overall across all three criteria. How to judge a winner then? If you are looking across all three criteria I would say Kilchoman Machir Bay holds its own. Sure, the Ben Nevis 10 strikes out in one, but crucially it is great in one and so the laurels go to Fort William and not Islay. _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_- The unbearable angst of a whiskyphile. I have too large a backlog of samples and miniatures to go through. Like choosing how to spell dilemma, deciding on a dram can often be a dilemna. I have selected sixteen scotch whiskies that are 12yrs or younger or NAS to battle it out in a Scotch Deathmatch. It’s my incentive to lighten the logjam. Follow along if you care (and really why should you?). Oh the drama! https://challonge.com/ScotchMadness