Distillery: Arran

Here’s the second whisky in the lineup for the Third Arran Tweet Tasting April 2015 – the hotly anticipated Arran 18 Year Old.

Nose: A little leathery, with sweet apple blossom, fresh peaches, juicy pears, white wine, and a sherbety (almost) smoky edge. Vanilla fudge and Highland chewy toffee. A pear strudel emerges. Bananas and salted cashews. Wow.

Palate: Toffee and cinnamon. Runny honey. Barley sugar sweets. A lovely, almost peaty tingle runs through the middle. Mellow fruit notes of tangerines, pineapples and ripe plums.

Finish: Slightly drying with tea leaves, egg custard, dried mangoes and apricots.

Those Oloroso hogsheads, being smaller than those big butts (tee hee!) get more wood contact so they’re imparted some great flavour here.

This is a refined and sexy whisky. Balanced, fruity, and very more-ish. Well worth the £72.99 asking price on the distillery website.

Next is an exclusive premium single Bourbon cask bottling…

The tweet tastings organised by Steve Rush are a lot of fun. Get involved over at www.thewhiskywire.com