Smell: Faint whisky but faint hints of timber (barrel?). Taste: Faint whisky again, but within a broader rich to almost slightly sweet spirit/liqueur aspect. That all leads into an overall impression of deep and pungent goodness. What dessert wine is to wine, this is the dessert-beer equivalent of. It's pretty rich and certainly heavy, but it's polished and ideal as a winter-warmer/slow-sipping kind of beer. The whisky note is quite subtle (in context of a pretty full-on beer) which I think is great - better than some of the 'aged in a spirit barrel' mega-overstatements I've had before.