“A beer with big roast and vanilla character. Beautiful and luscious.”

Glassware: Snifter.

Appearance: Solid black with two fingers of well retained head resting atop. Good lace work as we imbibe.

Aroma: It has certainly piqued our interest. Initially we picked up a strange funky-ness but that tapers off and it now offers a touch of red wine barrels, vinous berries, vanilla, tart dark fruits, sauna room, Sherry and aniseed. What the?! We literally had to double check the label to make sure we were drinking a whiskey barrel aged Imperial Stout. Turns out we are.

Flavour: It’s acting a bit more like a WBA Impy Stout now. Still struggling to work out why we’re getting such strong red wine characteristics. We’re unsure of the barrels used here but our guess would be Starward’s wine cask barrels as the typical notes from that whiskey are red wine, vanilla and Sherry. Throw in a flutter of roasted malt, chocolate and coffee and that pretty much sums this up.

Mouthfeel: Has a reasonable weight to it. Full-ish with a slightly lifted Co2. 11.9% ABV is evident but well buried for its size.

Overall: Not feeling it. We had high expectations with this (can you blame us when it has a $44 a bottle pricetag). Unfortunately it doesn’t back up.. the whiskey component is muddled and this strange funky-ness doesn’t help either. Very meh.