Very occasionally, one of the oldest distilleries in Speyside experiments with a batch of peated whisky, in complete contrast with its usual sweet, unpeated, farmy and flowery style: the result is always very interesting, a completely unique smoky single malt, which in this case is made even more unique by an eight months finish in first fill sherry. It’s a dark, very organic and brooding affair at the nose: smoky, yes, but with damp earthy notes, a rich and heavy style. At the palate, too, it’s a wildly unusual beast: not winey in spite of the sherry influence, but again the smokiness is of a very different kind, with notes of old wooden furniture, leather and mineral oil. And is that an echo of flowery character behind the darkness, as if to remind of which distillery it comes from?