Colour: amber. Nose: thrillingly earthy, salty sherry. This wonderful duality of sweet raisins and fresher exotic fruits. Dried pineapple, mango chunks, passion fruit syrup, then breads, cough medicine and a rather old school, herbal peatiness. Camphor, hardwood resins and more herbal qualities like throat sweets, waxes and old liqueurs. Brilliant and compelling as expected. Mouth: a tad soft on arrival but otherwise gloriously tropical, salty and fatty. Bacon fat, tar, ointments, dried herbs, cured meats and jellied tropical fruits. Getting wonderfully broad and complex; the peat is generous, herbal, thick and warming. Let’s not beat about the bush here. Finish: long with a deep and drying peatiness. Surprisingly peaty really. More tar, dried herbs, cured meats and salinity in the aftertaste. Comments: Probably not the best old Bicentenary but this is still mesmerising and heartwarming old whisky, just a tad fragile I think. I wonder if this will be an increasing phenomena as these old bottles get even older: bottle variation? The fruits, salt and meaty, earthy robustness are still profoundly pleasurable here though. However, a bottle in better condition can easily hit 95+

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