The first impression is ‘sooty’: a ‘well-fired roll with melted butter and cremated bacon and smoked black pudding’; later, tide-line tar, sea-shells, beach pebbles and plastic rope, and with a dash of water (don’t add too much) coal dust and uncooked cabbage. The taste is sweet and very smoky, with some liquorice and coal dust at full strength and mixed herbs with lime marmalade and a trace of blackcurrant at reduced strength. A most unusual colour - although this distillery famously bottled some ‘Black’ expressions from 1964 which now fetch around £1,600 at auction; the original retail price was £100.