The panel’s experience is summed up above, with the sub-head “wood, smoke, blood”! The first aroma is of treacle toffee, then smoky bacon crisps, then a musky note, like truffle oil. A dry nose and tannic, and very masculine. The taste at natural strength is intensely sweet, then immediately full of coal smoke, coal tar, hessian. At reduced strength it remains big and bold and smoky, but now with Daddy’s Sauce and well-worn leather saddles; the taste remains very sweet, but this is now balanced by a hoppy bitterness and a shake of salt. Intense, tarry, smoky – just what we hope for from this distillery, whose motto was ‘Love it or Hate it. No Compromise’.