Let’s start the month with one of the five single cask bottles I opened in the week of my 50th birthday. I selected whiskies that were distilled and/or bottled in significant years of my life. The secondary goal was to end up with a group that spanned the old Scotch regions and also a range of whisky styles that I enjoy. First up from the set is this Glendronach 19. It was distilled in 1993, the year I left India for the US—permanently, as it turned out. This is a PX cask that was bottled for the UK market. It’s one of several 19 year olds distilled that year and bottled in 2012 or 2013—Whiskybase lists 17! Now, we know that at Glendronach “single cask” doesn’t necessarily mean the whisky is from a single cask. And it’s also true that some of the least successful examples of “single cask” whisky from Glendronach have been PX casks (see, for example, this one and also this one). On the other hand, there have also been some I’ve liked (like this one). Where will this one fall?
Let’s see. Continue reading →

In my “Coming Soon” posts for the last couple of months I’ve promised a Glendronach 17 yo from 1995 bottled for the Whisky Exchange. But I’ll be damned if I know where that sample is. As I’m unlikely to have pulled something so specific out of thin air, there are two possibilities: the sample is lost somewhere on my shelves; or I drank it at some point without taking notes or clearing it from my samples database. It’s so wonderful getting old! Anyway, I have for you instead a Glendronach 18, 1991. This was released in 2010 and was from only the third batch of Glendronach’s releases. In those days the mania for this series had not yet set in and it was not difficult to acquire bottles; nor were the prices so high. It was also well before suspicions began to be expressed about the nature of these releases. You may have already seen my post about the question of whether these were/are indeed single casks in the way that most consumers understand the term—if not, you can read it here. Well, as it happens this putative single oloroso cask also yielded an unlikely number of bottles: 760 to be exact; suggesting that this too was a product of a cask or two being re-racked into an oloroso butt for the final phase of the maturation. Has this resulted in flabby whisky? Let’s see.  Continue reading →

A third 25 yo whisky to end the week and this is an official release with a rather big reputation: a Glendronach distilled in 1968 and bottled in 2003. I’ve had small pours of it on a couple of occasions before; this large sample came to me from the ever-generous Sku. This is a throwback to Glendronach’s past, distilled and bottled before the Billy Walker era (which itself ended last year). Indeed this whisky was bottled when the distillery was still owned by Allied Distillers and before it was mothballed in 1996. It’s an old-school sherry monster that does more at 43% than most others of its kind do at cask strength, and I’m looking forward to making its acquaintance again.

By the way, the usually restrained Johannes van den Heuvel gave this whisky 97 points! I’m not sure when in his whisky tasting career he rated this or what he would make of it now. Anyway, let’s get to it.  Continue reading →

It’s been more than two years since I’ve reviewed a Glendronach. That was a review of the 15 yo Revival, which was about to go on hiatus at the time. I’m not sure what the situation is with that or the 18 yo Allardice, especially as the distillery’s ownership has changed since then, with Billy Walker moving on to Glenallachie. I’m also not sure what the new ownership has been doing with Glendronach’s single cask program—I haven’t paid much attention to that either, having gotten slowly turned off the distillery as a whole since learning about their “single cask” shenanigans. I do have a bunch of single cask Glendronachs on my shelf, however—though I haven’t purchased any in the last couple of years—and my ambivalence about the distillery does not extend to refusing to open and drink or review them. This particular cask was bottled for Abbey Whisky, a British online store. I’ve previously reviewed another Glendronach exclusive to them—an oloroso cask—and it was that one that led me to purchase this one. I opened it at one of my friend Rich’s whisky gatherings up in the Twin Cities, and while a number of people there really liked it, I was not very convinced by it (and nor was he, I think). I’ve since taken it to my local tasting group’s most recent tasting as well and most people there loved it. I liked it a bit more on that occasion but not very much more. Continue reading →

As you may have heard, the Glendronach 15 is going on a hiatus for a few years. Presumably the distillery needs to build up aged stock for future releases. You may also know that some of the age-stated regular release Glendronachs put out since the new ownership re-opened the distillery in 2008 have in fact mostly been older than the age stated on the label. This is because the distillery was mothballed from 1996 to 2002. What this means is that a 12 yo released between 2009 (which is when it was first released) and 2014 had to be more than 12 years old (as no spirit was distilled between mid-1996 and 2002). But starting last year the 12 yo could at least theoretically have gone back to being 12 yo whisky distilled in 2002. Not so for the 15 yo. A 15 yo released in 2015 (as this bottle was) cannot contain spirit distilled in 2000 and is therefore at least 18 years old, possibly more. And so rather than continue to put ever older whisky into the 15 yo, as they did for a good number of years, the distillery seems to have decided to wait till spirit distilled in 2002 and later turns 15 years old. Presumably they’d rather save the older casks for their lucrative, so-called “single cask” releases. Can’t fault them for that. Continue reading →

I really liked the last Whiskybase exclusive Glendronach—this 21 yo oloroso cask from 1993—and am hoping this 19 yo from a PX cask will have more in common with it than with the controversial PX cask 23 yo that led to all the fuss about Glendronach’s use of the term “single cask”. Of course, what that controversy tells us is that using the terms “oloroso cask” or “PX cask” may be meaningless. As the cask information on the label only refers to the last cask in which more than one cask may have been re-racked, this so-called PX cask may in fact have whisky in it that spent far more of its life in oloroso casks, and the so-called oloroso casks that so many prefer may have whisky in them that spent a goodly portion of their lives in bourbon casks (and may even have been re-racked alongside PX casks). Yes, what finally matters is what a particular whisky tastes like, but if that’s the case, why bother putting cask details on the labels at all? Anyway, I shouldn’t get on a high horse about this as I’m obviously still buying Glendronach’s “single cask” releases. Continue reading →