The nose has an undisputed sweet, floral, woody freshness going on – with puffcandy, chocolate, grass, silage, strawberry, orange oil and the forest after the rain. Then fur coats, pickled lemons and gorse bloom.

For a start what is all this “intense peat� nonsense, this seems a mildly peated whisky at most. Perhaps this is a biased view from a room full of avid Islay whisky drinkers but the initial most striking thing about this peated malt is its incredibly mild hint of peatiness! Not to say it’s bad, on the contrary there is a lot going on here, so much so we are all stumped to tie down tastes at first...

Eventually... on to the tastes and there’s a chalky, fruitiness, with a sweetness akin to maple syrup, liquor cherries, blood orange and stewed pears....an oiliness persists here too, with mention of mechanical oil and North Sea crude.

A resonance of smoke rings (stolen from another) and a coal shuttle but also a contrasting freshness of fir, caraway, heather and mint. The taste lingers but not as much as you might expect, most agree on a medium-long finish.

Overall the consensus is good but if we didn’t know it was a peated malt we would have hardly noticed – there are a supple hints but maybe this is enough for the moment for this new strain of Irish Whisky. There are a nice range of flavours going on here which is to be commended, a sweetness, freshness and mild smokiness complement each other well and for those dabbling in peated malts for the first time this is a very easy start, indeed it is a very drinkable whisky.

Note to marketing department – please, please re-investigate the labelling of the whisky, as it is you may as well offer a free leprechaun key chain inside, like some horrendous St. Patrick themed Kinder Egg – less “top o’ the morning� and more elegance please.

~£29 (70cl)

Whisky Exchange: Connemara Peated Whisky   |   http://www.thewhiskyexchange.com/P-2849.aspx

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.

76 / 100