A mixed evening of interesting bottles. From an SMWS Glen Scotia to an Icelandic 'whisky', a Japanese blend and a private cask bottle from Glenglassaugh.

You've been sent to a hospital by the sea with the unfortunate condition of having caramelised your bananas. After the decent run of medical science, it transpired in the late 2020s that actually herbal medicine and alternative therapies were correct, and they swiftly replac...

It's definitely rubbery but also really sweet (brown sugar), creamy (cream soda, butter) and peppery (er.. pepper). "What do cymbals smell like?" ("cymbolic?" - it's no longer clear how well this joke went down..). In fact, it smells of cymbal cleaner - the drummers in the a...

Gob-stopping sweetness; Cherry Coke, cream soda and apricot jam but with the sour ending of the last sugary key lurking at the bottom of a packet of Tangfastics.

From the sawmills to the farmyard, with undertones of burning turf and old leather, it’s stylishly unrefined. And for those dessert enthusiasts, there’s even a dollop of molasses in there to sweeten the deal.

It was still aligned with normality when strawberry Starburst and buttery were observed (or obnosed), but then we got a bit abstract: an isolated pond, 'quite sorry like campers' (?), a man peeing on a night out ("Sheila 2014") and deep-fried pig rectum (!)..

Sweetness came in in the form of a Flake, some fudge, a donut and a dank, old cupboard in a hospital. Actually, scatch that last one…

Some fondly remembered encounters of uncloven animals chewing on some grass. For others, it is trip to France for some Tarte Tatin covered in custard.

Much like the nose we have a continued deep, rich sweetness, with milk chocolate, and toffee apples. In fact it's like “skiing into a giant chocolate caramel but then there's a hole in the chocolate like your exact shape – then there's an instant move into toffee�.

This has a powerful, aromatic capriciousness (best taken orally) but still has a whiff of an unfinished PowerPoint, which Ali was convinced had something to do with The Pelican Brief and the taste of his school pal Nick Marsh.

I don't know what 'distilled grass' is, but if it were a real thing, it would smell like this - but also haggis.

Some unusual nosing techniques attempted here (giving the unusual category of 'taste on the eye', conclusion: sting-y), and someone said "the biggest fucking joke in the whisky club", we're virtually "100% farm" sure this wasn't meant negatively towards the nose, but who kno...

Like cruising through city streets in the summer (verging on the edge of regret) the taste of warm tar and worn leather merges with a strong theme of burnt food: sugar, soda bread and toast with marmalade.

In a sort of mad festive disaster, the Christmas pudding meets glue and hot tyres on a Formula 1 track, whilst the Quality Street get covered in coffee cream and lavender.

It’s foosty, like an old Scout Patrol tent or a wool tie from a charity shop. There are also notes of syrup, burnt jam and perhaps a meaty flavour? It’s going to be 'ham-azing' to taste..!

There’s also a subtle earthiness with moss, hay and apple wood (the wood not the cheese)…not sure if I should mention “the blood soaked teddy on a damp fire place�...maybe he meant iron and damp earth?

Everything from raisin sawdust to Burgundy-coloured tapestries, with a stopover at to see Bruce Springsteen and the original German Werther's factory.

"Oh boy! Empire biscuits!", yelped an intolerable Victorian child, as the HMS Dandelion & Burdock began to dock. A hive of activity erupted from deck as smells of sweetened sawdust morphed into that of a barn in summer for those with an imagination powerful enough to transmo...

You'd think any tasting review that starts with "like lava at Mount Fugu!" would be firmly put in its place for terrible cultural mismatching, but I'm pretty sure this 'error' was intended - it was hot, fiery and there was a small chance of a poisonous death, but if you trea...

There is a whiff of recently prepared surgical tools but also a floral fruitiness with pineapple, apple (granny Smith to be precise!), cherry pie, lemon (rudely shouted at that) and bluebells feed to a halibut?!

Cherryish and raisiny - strangely our convictions seem to be deserting us as we consume more alcohol, the opposite of normal. Talking of 'deserting', we also got bread and butter pudding..

Pop this under yo schnozzer and it's immediately festival time, one where you hang around by the sea, breathe in the coastal air, have a BBQ with some seagulls and get beaten to death by a peat fire!

On the finish - a resonance of smoke rings (stolen from another) and a coal shuttle but also a contrasting freshness of fir, caraway, heather and mint. The taste lingers but not as much as you might expect.

There’s something else going on too, it’s kind of dry and tangy, like ironmongery perhaps? Or flat Tennents and skunk? Sounds like a dangerous combo…

A used rubber (not that type) and the smell of tea tree oil moves things into confusing directions and it's difficult to know which path to take back, but whichever path you take, it'll no doubt be lined with sangria, salt, orange and grapefruit.

Burnt Moss (Stirling's son, conceived after a very sexy race at the Nürburgring, very different to Colin McRae's win at the Nuremberg Rally

When a whisky is described as 'nail varnish and farty figs', 'goaty' 'cream candy (co)ca(i)ne' and 'expelled air from a bouncy castle', you know it's at least interesting. Oh, and 'figgy piggy' / 'hamnanas & rumtanas' on the taste. Intriguing..

In some kind of mad banana-fuelled rage, he storms out the room, picks up his damp laundry and coffee cake and runs off into the chorizo horizon.

There were lots of floral things being brought up, but the tone wasn't that glowing: outdoors but indoors (like a greenhouse), a bad flower, parma violets - parma violence -, tomato pheromones, and those small white flowers in a flower arrangement.

Zimbabwean mint & lamb crisps take us in an unusual direction before we're redirected to herbs and freshly cut grass. Roast pork and yoghurt sounds like a tasty dish, but it's all washed down with evil gingerbread!

Boil the billy furra cuppa mayt! AWWWW MAYT! 'Bonza (itsa billy-o-cawfee mayt!)'. Eeevry bugger’s beltin' “Bonza “itsa “bonza 'itsa billy-o-cawfee mayt!'? Cawfee up the wazoo mayt!

More unusually, we finally picked up hints of the aftertase of a polystyrene cup you've had soup in and when you chew a pencil and get through to the lead..

After a few more sniffs it appeared to conjure deeper, more sentimental, notes of girl’s plastic toys (‘My little Pony’ to be exact), old lady perfume (controversially 43+ years), the Chinese fan on Shelley’s wall, Windolene and for those amongst us who obviously had a more...

If there was ever a whisky whose nose was no indication of what was to come in the palate, then here it is. It's like a nasal ninja, popping up your nose and lieing to your face.

The tastes on the finish mostly strayed towards the savoury end of the palate, with mild chili pepper, cinnamon, taco spice, salted peanuts and sun-dried tomatoes. Sherbert and melon came along to the party in the mouth, but no one could remember if they were invited - they ...

Icelandic wood then shifts us towards white wine vinegar and cloves, with basil sitting out there on its herby lonesome (who incidentally sounds like a 50s blues singer)

"It's unclear whether the latter was simply a reference to the length of nail that the pneumatic drilling would be sensibly combined with, or a clever twist on the the band 9 Inch Nails, and this was in fact suggesting this whisky was like pneumatic drilling on a stage for w...

Yikes, well now the party's started - it's a full-mooner, and there's a raging inferno of wasp stings, curry leaves, beef sherbet, Kendal mint cake and jalapeno peppers (stuffed with cheese for good measure) . And just in case you weren't convinced of its strength, someone i...

This does justice to soothing the remnants of last night’s spontaneous soiree. An interesting mix of cider, sherry and apple sourz chasers served with green olives.

Well, despite his unfortunate decent into chronic financial problems and alcoholism towards the end of his distinguished career, this tastes surprisingly nothing like I imagine he would have tasted.

Most people felt this had a medium finish (20 yards out?), which kinda means a short finish as no one ever says short, except the people who said short and one who sat on the fence so much we creosoted her, saying 'short-to-medium-to-long'. One wag (in the droll, not doll, s...

There appear to have been a couple of camps (not glamps) here, with some getting an intense, dry, woody vibe and some a fruity sweetness - weird.

If i were going to stick any firework up my arse, it would be a roman candle - so it looks like you're pooping fire

The air infiltrated with sea spray and smoke, possibly a bit more pungent like the smoke from a cigarette bin fire. Fresh in the form of fuchsias, strawberries, cluster cherries, borderline mushy green grapes but also punchy and spirity like solvent and new make.

In general “fruity as shit�! There is also some grassy, fresh sweetness – like the juice from a fruit salad...or perhaps “an acidic power that you might find in a lab and not sure if you should lick it�.

Before battle, the two teams feast on sweet treats of honey, Cointreau, honeycomb, molasses and Crunchie bars. Once the fighting is over, the wounds are carefully washed with a little rose water and patched up with some plasters... who knows who the victor was, it's a fictio...

Nettles grow from cracks in the floor and through a broken window you can almost taste the pine trees and distant rock pools blown into the happy gathering. A small child has grazed her knee and while she blubs and munches liquorice and burnt candy a nurse applies TCP to the...

"Smells radge" and "holy fuckballs!" sum up the general feeling towards the smell, although there was some variation, with one saying it smelled boring, hard to place, generic and not very good and another saying it was the best nose of any whisky they'd experienced

Quite light... "it's not an unpleasant thing to put in your mouth though, right?". [bagpipes are drowning us out...] Phil describes bagpipes as "an audible version of a headache". Ooga booga booga!

Hmm, this is a young whisky, but does that explain the whiff of teenage boys’ aftershave? Oh no, I see, it’s just Chad Kroeger, munching on a mars bar.

Cherry lip death and very drunken bananas. Like all the condiments I like: Worcester sauce, Tabasco, ketchup, brown sauce and vinegar. And rinds of various kinds.

Oranges, orange rind, pith..."What a pithy comment" - Phil (no one laughs). "Says a guy who chases his whisky with milk" - Christina (people laugh). "Another pithy comment!" - Ali L (reaction unrecorded).

Banana foams give us a link from fruit to toffee, with coconut and tree sap watching from the sidelines. Flying saucers too (presumably the sweets?), but also a touch of bleach and Glacier Mints - a mixed bag!

This had Finn Russell on the finish, which was perhaps it's most interesting feature?

Oh my god, holy fuck tomatoes, it does not smell of quality, smells of shit, farmyard new make, oil smell of sheep wool, a running dairy farm, worst smell ever

There's now a herby, bitter sourness and Aquavit is the new alcohol metaphor, with toothpaste and dentist's mouthwash taking on the clinical mantle.