Appearance: Again, quite light in colour, white dessert wine. Lots of nice medium legs and good viscosity.
Nose: A much richer and more luxurious nose. Darker fruits, still the confectionary sugar dimension, the ABV is definitely showing itself. The abv fairly quickly starts to fade on the nose for me. There’s a cheese and onion crisp aromas in there might be a ‘funk’ variant smell?! Sugar sprinkled green apple, lemon shortbread biscuits. A complex and evolving nose.
Palate: Lovely sweet and creamy flavour and texture. Very desserty and comforting. The ABV works really well, almost acts to concentrate the sweet flavours with a pinch of white pepper. Boiled down raspberries on vanilla ice cream. A chilli tingle builds on the tongue.
This is easily my favourite. The 12yo at CS might come close I guess? Buttermilk, a touch of garden mint, I keep thinking melon, so very subtle, vanilla, and victoria sponge cake.
Finish: That sponge cake, especially the dusting of icing sugar mixing with the sponge. Concentrated jam, buttermilk and a touch of mint
Overall: The best of the 3 by a decent margin. The ABV helps, and I’m surprised this is only matured in a bourbon cask and not finished in a wine cask.
