Category Archives: Glendronach

Glendronach 23, 1990, Cask 1240

Posted on by

Glendronach 23, 1990
A little over a year ago I published what has probably become the most read of all my whisky posts: my report on Glendronach’s somewhat freewheeling use of the term “single cask”. This post has been in the top 10 most read pages on the blog every month since, and it seems like it gets linked to on some whisky forum somewhere in the world for the first time every week.

While whisky geeks seem to find the question interesting they also seem to have largely shrugged at the practice. There hasn’t been any sort of sustained outrage, and nor have there been calls for Glendronach to clarify their practices or use less misleading language on their labels—I haven’t myself purchased any of the single cask releases since then and so can’t confirm if there has in fact been any change on that front.

Well, we get the transparency that we ask for, and the industry is probably all too pleased that we don’t really ask for very much. Continue reading →

Glendronach 33, Three Generations (Duncan Taylor)

Posted on by

Glendronach Three Generations
With a name like “Three Generations” this whisky doubtless has some complicated story behind it. However, I’m too tired to track it down. I’m not even sure if it is a single cask. I know it is comprised of whisky distilled in 1975 and is, unusually for Glendronach, not from sherry casks. This sells in the vicinity of $300 in the US (where still available) but it was recently discounted heavily in the state of Oregon and this discounted price was split further between me, Jordan D. (of Chemistry of the Cocktail), Michael K. (of Diving for Pearls) and Florin (master of the oyster dance). Let’s get right to it.

Glendronach 33, 1975, Three Generations (51.4%; from a bottle split with friends)

Nose: Honey, malt and toasted oak–spicy and creamy with a nice hit of vanilla. Below that there’s a bit of prickly, peppery citrus (somewhere between lemon and orange). With time/air the fruit takes a slightly tropical turn with some (tinned) pineapple and papaya making their way into the mix. With more time the fruit gets muskier and takes over. With a lot more time there’s a fair bit of tart mango on the nose. With a drop of water the fruit is joined by more malt and wood. Continue reading →

Glendronach Revisited: The Allure of Single Casks

Posted on by

Last month I made a post I wasn’t planning to about confusions about Glendronach’s prized single cask releases. You can read it and how/why I came to write it here. Long story short: the term “single cask” probably rarely means what you think it means. This may have been the most read of any post I’ve made in the year (almost) since my blog went live. It’s no real big surprise why: Glendronach is a rising star distillery among geeks, and geeks love discovering “dirty secrets” of the industry–as I’ve said a number of times in a number of places, most of us actually know very little about what goes on at the production level in the Scotch industry. The outrage that my post sparked, at least for a day or two (and, for a change, not directed at me) had its source, I think, in the fact that the “dirty secret” being revealed is connected directly to the chief source of Glendronach’s growing cult status among geeks: the cachet of the single cask. I’d like to possibly annoy you about that today. Continue reading →

Glendronach Confusion (or What is a “Single Cask”?)

Posted on by

[Update: See the follow-up post here.]

Warning: this is long and symptomatic of obsessive compulsive disorder, and in any case may be something you already know or don’t care about. If you do choose to read the whole thing what are you going to find? Well, after a long’ish setting of the stage in which I describe how I came to think about this issue at all and the conversations that led me to explore it further, I detail how I came to discover that the term “Single Cask” may not refer to a whisky that was matured for its entire life in one cask; and furthermore that the cask type stated may not refer to the only type of cask in which it was matured. My chief reference here is to the Glendronach distillery but I suspect this is far more broadly applicable. Continue reading →

Glendronach 19, 1993, Cask 490 (for K&L)

Posted on by

GlendronachThese days it’s hard to throw a stone in the whisky world without hitting a single cask release from Glendronach (though it would probably be a good idea to not throw stones in the whisky world, were one to actually exist). It feels like there’s one every other month. We don’t really get any of these in the US usually, and so it’s nice to see this release from K&L of an official oloroso sherry cask from 1993. I have already reviewed another 1993 oloroso sherry cask release from Glendronach (also 19 years old) and you can read my take on that one here.

K&L seems to have had some trouble selling this one out. That’s a shame because this is really quite good. The problem is probably that the whisky market in the US is not quite as mature as in the EU when it comes to single malts and the Glendronach name doesn’t carry quite much cachet here yet as it does in the UK and Europe where a much larger set of casks are released every year and most sell out. As a result, $140 for a 19yo probably seems like too much of a barrier. I think it would probably help if the excellent Glendronach 15 “Revival” were a little cheaper and could function as a gateway for the brand (the more affordable 12 yo “Original” is fine but nothing very distinctive); but, in general, I think it is hard in the US to sell the general malt market on relatively expensive teenaged whiskies from the second and third-tier names (even if the whiskies themselves are very good). Continue reading →

Glendronach 19, 1993, Cask 536

Posted on by

glendronach199319Glendronach used to be, and sometimes still is, listed as a Speyside distillery, but the Scotch Whisky Association (which regulates the production and marketing of all Scotch whisky quite strictly) has placed it (along with the similarly regionally troublesome Ardmore) in the Highlands. And as the SWA is a litigious lot, let’s agree that it is in the Highlands; and as I don’t particularly care about regionality, let’s just forget I brought the whole thing up.

Glendronach used to be open, then they closed, and then they opened again, and in 2008 were bought by the same folks who revived Benriach. Since this takeover there’s been an overhaul of the core line: there’s a new 12 yo (“the Original”), a new 15 yo (“the Revival”), and an 18 yo (“the Allardice”, named after a founder, I believe). I have not had the 18, but the 12 and particularly the 15 are quite good in their class. Neither are as good, in my view,  as the more recent 21 yo “Parliament”, which is now available in the US. However, among whisky geeks the excitement around Glendronach—which is seen in this community as surpassing the Macallan and vying with Glenfarclas for the championship belt in the heavily sherried weight-class—attaches itself largely to their releases of various single cask whiskies from particular vintages. I have tried a few of these and they have all been very good at worst, and a 15 yo, 1995 single PX sherry cask (#4681) for the UK was really quite excellent. Continue reading →