Expert Review

Nose: Extremely fresh throughout. Quite closed, soft and waxy at first, with traces of spirit and citrus; then grassy, with notes of hay soaring above a sweet, malty base. Things open up to reveal fresh high notes of vanilla and floral honey, and below this fruit boxes that once held crisp green apples, unripe pears or gooseberries on a light base of heathery moorland and peat. Water brings up a fresh fruit salad of pear and banana in honeyed syrup, with just a touch of bitter orange. That moorland aroma is now fragrant beeswax and there’s spicy pepper too. Palate: Smooth, creamy texture. Menthol-cool, lightly sweet and citrusy with a fresh edge; malty too, with an unusual yet pleasingly perfumed mid-palate. Finally, drying at the back. Slightly sweeter and quite spicy with water, showing notes of butterscotch and clove then again increasingly dry and aromatic, with more of that hay. Finish: Quite short and appetisingly dry. Cooling, minty with fragrant pine resins and some very late smoke, finally becoming leafy. With water, dry, warming and softly pungent: just a hint of eucalyptus now.