Auchentoshan Distillery, Scotland     founded: 1823 | active
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A "fucking incredible" nose, there's spring fruits and apple jolly ranchers, ginger cake and various digestifs including Calvados, Grappa and Aquavit. Some go to more serious drinks such as nail polish remover / acetone,and various cleaning products. It's woody but fresh, like some roses in an Essex Grandad's beechwood shed.

Most of the smells carry over into the taste here. Medica, a Croatian honey liqueur, is thrown in as an additional digestif. Like Outkast, it is so fresh and so clean. Lemony fresh, in fact, with lemon sherbet and citrus oil and, what the hell, actual lemons in there. There's a herby grapefruit and basil cocktail strugglingto get out. It's also got some savory background - salty chorizo sausage to be specific. It was deemed a morning whisky, or breakfast dram, with many attendant caveats. And finally, the sense of something intangible, call it "rhrhyrhtrtgrtg",if you will.

A savoury and tart finish, short and hot like a lime pickle. Actually not short though. It's like the finale of a tequila slammer.

[Editor inclusion: 'I also have the note, "tampon full of meth(s) to put up your arse" but I don't quite know whether I should put it in. So to speak. Or where it could be put. So to speak.']

~£50 (70cl)

We've always scored out of 10 in our group (see number in red box, below), with scores regularly given across that spectrum. The value out of 100 below is adjusted to the scale most commonly used for whisky reviews, to allow for better comparison.

82 / 100