From what I've had before, this is a classic Japanese sherry nose, much like a Karuizawa. Mushrooms, a ?'forest floor' but in a wood ('floor of a wood' sounded confusing..), dry sherry vibes but sweet smelling. Thick banana toffee, caramel and maple syrup. Musty and mahogan...

The nosings spread out a little bit into a plethora of nature's best offerings: plants and herbs (oniony fennel, coriander leaves, licorice and coffee), more tangy offerings (orange zest, aniseed, paprika and pepper) and some nice locations (a pebble beach with a fire, The W...

It's spent 35 years in this cask, but it's strangely new make-y, yet weirdly quite intense. Often new make on the nose is a very bad sign, but this is a quite intriguing... and wow, pop it in your mouth and it's a pine forest, with dried fruits, apricots and old-fashioned s...

It's definitely rubbery but also really sweet (brown sugar), creamy (cream soda, butter) and peppery (er.. pepper). "What do cymbals smell like?" ("cymbolic?" - it's no longer clear how well this joke went down..). In fact, it smells of cymbal cleaner - the drummers in the a...

It's pretty burny at first whiff, which gradually moves towards kerosene, a lit fire and then just-picked spearmint. Quite spiced, with oranges and icing sugar. Definitely creamy over time, complemented by rosemary and a woody leafiness and strangely enough, swimming pools....

This had a surprisingly weak smell, even when you poked your schnozzle right into its midst. What was there was pleasant enough, just hard to find - old wood and sweet caramel, but I was struggling for more (admittedly, I didn't have much time on this dram, hence the short ...

Those savoury thoughts expand out to mid-Century Scandinavian rosewood unpolished furniture, the feeling of a recently blown out match on the tongue and an olive oily texture (no, we weren't drunk, promise.).

Smells of fish sauce, old marker pens, aniseed balls, mints, cheese. Tastes of prawn cocktail crisps, apple juice, tangfastics sugar, coca cola and varnish.

Stick your nose near this and you immediately smell cherries and cherry lips, maybe hints of toffee too? Really woody also, and over time it becomes unmistakenly peaty but it takes more time than you'd expect, especially considering how much it shines through eventually. It...

'Touch Tackie!' - If I recall correctly, it was the hazy summer of 1996 when Brandy released her worldwide smash, Toffifee & Milo. Well, actually it wasn't, was it? But we did indeed get 'brandy' with those two.

It's the snack counter at York's famous cinema conversion project - as we pass the fire-hardened 13th century oak door we move on to the mixture of sweet and salty popcorn.

Big alcoholic vapours poured out of this, with fruit on the side. Literally had to smell it with my nose sideways next to the glass, to avoid the sting-y stream of alco-vapour! Slightly young smelling. Initially I thought this tasted like a Highland Park, but gradually lost...

A really intriguing taste with exotic origins: onion bhajis with yoghurt dip, lemon rind, Eat Me dates (the hottest kind..?), cardamom, cheesy curry. Then things got a bit sweeter to nicely balance the exotica - pineapple juice (and Hamish's terrible joke...now forgotten), p...

A long finish with a slow fade away that's very sweet and salty, whilst a new creaminess comes to the fore multiplying the fruitiness and sweetness of the taste into some banana ice cream.

There's quite a lot of soft, creamy flavours here - banana & peach crumble, soft fruits and the moment just as a marshmallow starts to burn on a bonfire all impact on the nose, with less of a fieriness than many grain whiskies. When you pop it into your mouth, you get a sli...

In some kind of mad banana-fuelled rage, he storms out the room, picks up his damp laundry and coffee cake and runs off into the chorizo horizon.

With Russell's declaration that he went to an amateur wrestling match ringing in our ears, we cracked on with the smells. The result reads like a shopping list for the dessert menu of an ailing restaurant, whose chef is unable to see the difference between wackiness for its ...

A rich nose beckons: oaky and sherried, with tobacco and toffee, no freshness here. Ham really shines through from the sherry. That sherry really dominates the taste too, now with spice and ham again. It's salty too, but that disappears quickly. It's quite dry and less fruit...

In a sort of mad festive disaster, the Christmas pudding meets glue and hot tyres on a Formula 1 track, whilst the Quality Street get covered in coffee cream and lavender.

The first thing I got on the nose was spiced fruit, then a fresh Lowlandy vibe came through, but wasn't the dominant factor. Sherbet dippers (sherbet and liquorice too) and a slightly creamy thing going on (more creamy than its tasting buddy, the

You've been sent to a hospital by the sea with the unfortunate condition of having caramelised your bananas. After the decent run of medical science, it transpired in the late 2020s that actually herbal medicine and alternative therapies were correct, and they swiftly replac...

Boil the billy furra cuppa mayt! AWWWW MAYT! 'Bonza (itsa billy-o-cawfee mayt!)'. Eeevry bugger’s beltin' “Bonza “itsa “bonza 'itsa billy-o-cawfee mayt!'? Cawfee up the wazoo mayt!

The tastes on the finish mostly strayed towards the savoury end of the palate, with mild chili pepper, cinnamon, taco spice, salted peanuts and sun-dried tomatoes. Sherbert and melon came along to the party in the mouth, but no one could remember if they were invited - they ...

Liquorice, marshmallows and jelly oranges bring some childishness to the sweet class, whilst flambéed Christmas pudding, boozy carrot cake, cinnamon swirls and vanilla ice cream and even some acidic cheese escalate the post-dinner madness with an unexpected pudding course....

Most people felt this had a medium finish (20 yards out?), which kinda means a short finish as no one ever says short, except the people who said short and one who sat on the fence so much we creosoted her, saying 'short-to-medium-to-long'. One wag (in the droll, not doll, s...

Starts off smelling of varnish and is slightly sting-y, then nutty and a (maybe distant) appleyness, with a freshness thrown in alongside vanilla and nuttiness. Then comes pot pourri, orange and a sugary sweetness (sugar cane). There's also something a bit unusual on the si...

When a whisky is described as 'nail varnish and farty figs', 'goaty' 'cream candy (co)ca(i)ne' and 'expelled air from a bouncy castle', you know it's at least interesting. Oh, and 'figgy piggy' / 'hamnanas & rumtanas' on the taste. Intriguing..

As the once majestic engine chugs into the station, it begins to reveal its cargo of the world’s exotica: Macadamia nuts, sultanas, fermenting papaya (it was a long journey), under-ripe mashed banana (or not long enough, but bumpy – no Pendolinos here), pickled lemons (final...

Things get more exciting as our tongues prickle with paprika and popping candy as, the sweetness over, lime pickle squeezes the mouth and English mustard washes like rainwater over this slightly salty ending.

On the nose, there's clear mint and minty garden herbs, lemon toothpaste, nail varnish remover, haystacks and ham. It's a bit gentler and light on the palate, a tiny amount of acid and slight lemon, nice and creamy also ("Thanks, Creamy!). Somewhat watery, with cress, tobac...

A short-to-medium finish, described by one as, "the length of time between New Zealand winning the 2011 Rugby World cup and their next World Cup win" - 4 years as it turned out. This was then qualified as "in the context of Rugby World Cups, as short as could possibly be" (p...

Oranges, orange rind, pith..."What a pithy comment" - Phil (no one laughs). "Says a guy who chases his whisky with milk" - Christina (people laugh). "Another pithy comment!" - Ali L (reaction unrecorded).

There is a whiff of recently prepared surgical tools but also a floral fruitiness with pineapple, apple (granny Smith to be precise!), cherry pie, lemon (rudely shouted at that) and bluebells feed to a halibut?!

Things get somewhat more challenging (and non-existent) with peanut brittle popping up without the peanuts (The Ghost of Peanut's Past), hanging out inadvisedly with *something witty*, a man who's so up his own arse that he has asterisks in his name.

It's like waking up to some horrific morning after a party - a salty Ginster's pasty, charcoal, post vomit mouthwash, Andrew's salts, flat coke and something undefinable mushy and unpleasant.

There appear to have been a couple of camps (not glamps) here, with some getting an intense, dry, woody vibe and some a fruity sweetness - weird.

There were lots of floral things being brought up, but the tone wasn't that glowing: outdoors but indoors (like a greenhouse), a bad flower, parma violets - parma violence -, tomato pheromones, and those small white flowers in a flower arrangement.

Oh wow! Sweet ham, "just beautiful in a glass", maple syrup, sweet yet woody and herby. So many great smells. Orange with cinnamon, sherry, alcoholy and dry, "the only smell you'd want to smell for the rest of your life". It's more of the same in the taste, but a little amp...