Another lovely little bottling in this range of blends from venerable blender and bottler Ian Macleod.

This is a cracking dram: a blend of malt whisky from the Island region with that from Speyside and some mainland grain whisky too. This has the quality of tempering the often powerfully peated Island whiskies, and reducing some of that iodine-laden maritime flavor they sometimes possess.

One imagines there is a fair bit of Talisker in this blend, it being the only functional distillery on the Isle of Skye currently.

This dram offers up lovely notes of pepper, cereal sweetness and smoke, with a little Speyside character – honey and apples – building in the palate. 8 years in oak casks has rounded this whisky out very well, giving it a nice maturity and smoothness. One of the very best value blends out there at the moment.