Nose: Creamy with a little cut grass and pepper quickly give way to fresh orange peel, vanilla, malt loaf, coffee bean, calves leather, rich toffee and molasses.
Palate: Thick with loads of chocolate covered dates and a few raisins. Chewy, herbal and meaty too. Quite fantastic, basically.
Finish: Long with pleasant leather notes, cocoa, delicious coffee cake and a touch of mint on the tail.
Overall: First and foremost, this is just a cracking blended malt. Truly excellent stuff. It is also the third control whisky for the Reference Series' ongoing experiments, containing a significantly higher proportion of old and very old single malts than I and II.