Glen Elgin | My Annoying Opinions

Here is another unpeated whisky to close the month and it is also another from one of Diageo’s better received series: the Manager’s Dram. I’ve not had too many of these, as they came out before I was drinking single malt whisky (and the prices of what remains went past the reach of my wallet before I’d begun to venture past the easily available).

There were two releases of Glen Elgin in the Manager’s Dram series, one a 16 yo released in 1993 and this one, a 15 yo released in 1988 (I was just starting college then!). I acquired this sample as part of a bottle split, which is probably now the only way for me to drink many whiskies of this reputation/price—I can’t spring for full bottles at current prices but I can talk myself into thinking that the price for 30 or 60 ml represents good value. Let’s see if that turns out to be true in this case! Continue reading →

Here is the fourth of my four timely reviews of recent Signatory exclusives for K&L. Well, not entirely timely I guess: while the Imperial, Blair Athol and this Glen Elgin are still available, the Benrinnes is sold out.

Glen Elgin is another of the many distilleries of the Speyside with whose malt I don’t have a terrible lot of experience—in fact, this is the first I’ve reviewed on the blog. There’s not much available from it officially and in the US there’s not a whole lot available of it from the indies either. As such, this is another that I cannot really place in the context of the distillery’s usual profile. But I am curious to see if this turns out to be another of K&L’s selections of 20+ yo whisky that doesn’t actually display very many of the characteristics people associate with older whisky. Let’s see. Continue reading →