Let’s make it a week of age-stated, official releases from three different parts of Scotland. From Campbeltown on Monday, let’s move to the Speyside. Like the Kilkerran 16, the Glenallachie 15 is a relatively recent entrant into the market. As far as I can make out, it was first released in 2019, with more releases in the years following. Like the Glenallachie 12 (which I quite liked), this is a sherry cask whisky. Unlike the 12 yo, which has virgin oak cask matured spirit in the mix, the 15 yo is vatted entirely from PX and oloroso casks. Once again, I don’t know which year’s release my sample came from. But in this case it may not matter very much. This because there is apparently a lot of batch variation in these releases from the same years; and so the year of release by itself would not mean very much. In other words, here’s yet another completely useless review. You’re welcome. Continue reading
Category Archives: Glenallachie
Glenallachie 12, 2021 Release
Glenallachie, or The GlenAllachie, as they style themselves, is another of the Scottish distilleries I have very little experience of. I’ve only reviewed one other—this 22 yo bottled by/for Whiskybase. It is a young distillery—only built in 1967—and is also one of the few independent distilleries left in Scotland. Mothballed in 1985, it was purchased in 1989 by Campbell Distillers, who in turn later became part of Pernod Ricard’s holding. In 2017 it was purchased by a group including Billy Walker, ex of Glendronach. The following year the distillery released a new core range, featuring 10, 12, 18 and 25 yo whiskies. They’ve since added 8, 15, 21 and 30 yo expressions to that lineup. Good on them for not going the NAS route as so many have done. They’ve not as yet released any single cask whiskies—as far as I know—which means we might have to wait a while to find out if in the move from Glendronach to Glenallachie, Billy Walker’s understanding of what the term “single cask” means has undergone any development. At any rate, I am interested to see what this 12 yo is like. My understanding is it is put together as a vatting of ex-oloroso, PX and virgin oak-matured spirit. An unusual combo, to be sure. Let’s see what it’s like. Continue reading
Glenallachie 22, 1995 (Whiskybase)
This is the first Glenallachie I’ve reviewed and it may well be the first Glenallachie I’ve tasted. It was bottled just over a year ago by the good people of Whiskybase to commemorate a milestone on the popular crowdsourced whisky database: their 110,000th entry. I don’t know much about the distillery and so have no expectations. The distillery is relatively young, as Scottish distilleries go—it was opened in 1967 and then mothballed for a few years in the 1980s. For most of its life it produced mostly for blends but under the recent new ownership its malt offering has expanded. That new ownership, as you probably know, includes Billy Walker, ex-owner of Glendronach and pioneer of single cask shenanigans. As to whether we can expect more of that from Glenallachie as well—or The GlenAllachie, as the new owners style it—I guess only time will tell. For now let me tell you what I found this to be like after I opened the bottle. Continue reading
My Annoying Opinions 