The nose offered us chocolate and orange biscuits, orange muscat and marmalade, sherry-soaked trifle sponge and roasted chestnut kernels, with an intriguing hint of Barbour jackets. The palate was big and intense – singed wood, currants and now the shells of the roasted chestnuts – also crystallized orange, leather and maybe duck a l’orange.

The reduced nose brought Pedro Ximenez sherry, cough mixture and a burning hay-barn before turning back to marmalade and suggestions of vanilla. The palate was now rich, sweet and very dark – molasses, aniseed, figs and dates, with some tobacco, camphor and teriyaki beef on the finish; umbrageous, ebonized and fuliginous.