Batch 26

Thick and meaty, polished leather, ripe orchard fruit – pears and red apples. After a short while burnt toffee and dark chocolate come through.

Sumptuously viscous. Starts with intense cooked fruit and oats, giving way to a slight rubberiness and old leather. Some icing sugar, pear drops and barley sugar ensue. Chewy. Loses its brooding intensity with water, as you’d expect.

Here’s where the coffee grounds kick in, with toasted almonds and a hint of anise rounding it off nicely.

Meaty, rich and intense. It’s like bumping into Michael Keaton’s Bruce Wayne down a dark alley.

Smoking cigars on the terrace with Batman. 

A beach BBQ – seaweed, sea-washed pebbles and a coal-burning fire. Further in Flying Saucers, Sherbet Dip-Dabs and icing sugar make a nostalgic appearance, particularly with water. 

Quite meaty actually; very intense and spicy. Add water to discover stewed forest fruit, wood spice, and menthol.

Long, as the salty BBQ smoke slowly peters away.

A classic example of Bowmore’s ability to marry layered fruit alongside heavy smoke. Delightful.  

Shivering under a blanket while trying to stay out at the beach as late as possible.

Demerara sugar and cooked bananas dotted with milk chocolate. Later revealing caramelised apples, toffee apples even.

Creamy milk chocolate that develops into Thornton’s chocolate-covered toffee and then richly caramelised tarte tatin.

Silky smooth, kissed with a touch of spice.

Such remarkable depth and complexity that it rivals Willy Wonka’s Everlasting Gobstopper. 

Riding the carnival’s Ferris wheel, looking down contentedly on the world below.

Baked apples and cinnamon, ginger oat biscuits, dusty hay, vanilla. Water brings out some zingy green apple notes.

A vibrant mouth of cooked apples with sultanas and ginger spice, plus a generous splodge of sticky toffee pudding – with more ginger – for afters.

The prevalent ginger spice transforms into a lingering pepperiness as the Glenrothes’ floral notes come to the fore in the form of rose petals.

Absolutely delightful. Quite simply Speyside in a bottle.

Riding a horse bareback through a lush green Speyside landscape.

Liquorice blackcurrants, cherry-flavoured Tunes (menthol sweets). Pan-friend bacon cooked on a wood fire. Maraschino cherries soaking in syrup with whole roasted hazelnuts. Water brings out the eucalyptus scent.

It’s a sickly sweet blackcurrant pie dripping in syrup but punctuated by a rye pepperiness. Water softens the menthol spice (although the high strength is perfectly palatable without dilution) and reveals cooked plums and more forest fruit, all the while underpinned by that wood smoke. It’s a touch rancid in the middle.

A strong eucalyptus flavour on the finish. It’s like sucking on a Soothers lozenge at a friend’s BBQ, only the liquid has an equally numbing effect.

An interesting experimental release from Bruichladdich's Octomore matured entirely in virgin French oak. It's an intensely woody dram – almost too woody – although a strong fruit presence gives it some much needed depth.

Ditch the Lemsip and stock this in your hipflask. It will banish the nastiest of colds in no time.

Sweet vanilla fudge, mixed citrus peel and fluffy delicate fruit cake that – like the brand’s label – has been singed around the edges.

A dry, sour start builds into a mouthful of dates, grapefruit peel, orange peel, hazelnuts, almonds. Like reaching into a bag of dried fruit mix. A punch of TCP, salt spray and bonfire smoke bursts in unexpectedly in the middle.

Slightly dry. As that intense smoke eventually subsides it leaves notes of bitter dark chocolate, cloves and rum and raisin ice cream in its wake. There’s a very slight sulphury note on the end. 

It’s a fierce dram but in the end you’re left with the taste of chewing on the crusts of burnt fruitcake. 

Sneaking a sip from a hipflask smuggled into afternoon tea at the Ritz in the depths of winter. You know it’s naughty, but a brew just won’t cut it here.