Another ‘educated’ guess. Another sample that I could not pinpoint to a distillery, not even to a region. I started to get specifics from what I smelled and tasted to try and deduce a distillery, region or anything. Considering specific bottlings is something quite impossible with this many different samples.

Nose:
What I got at first was sherry and wood. Also some ‘ripe’ meat that can have that sickly sweet smell sometimes. Also some overripe fruit.

Taste:
A slight burning sensation, sweet, with quite some tropical fruit. Also something fresh on the background. Maybe anise?

Finish:
The finish is long with the sweetness and the meatiness again.

I was thinking of a slightly oversherried Highland dram. Quite some wood and fruit influences and a meatiness that I couldn’t really connect to a distillery. There aren’t that many distilleries that have the guts to release whiskies that are bold in a way like this one. I got to Ben Nevis because of that. I think I smelled a slight peatiness.

Laphroaig 20, 1990-2011, SMWS (29.97), 59.1%

Well, this has to be the second most unpeaty dram of Laphroaig I know (I tasted an unpeated one, a while ago from Cadenhead). The flavours put me in a bit of a dilemma because at some points I didn’t like the meatiness, but with the next sip I did. It is on the brink of tasting like rotting meat, but in a very interesting way. The wood and fruit are very nice and it is quite cool to taste something that is so inlike any Laphroaig I know!