In an effort to get politics off the Headline position and steer this blog back to its usual direction, a quick summary of the impromptu vertical whisky tasting that Liz & I did on Saturday afternoon.
When I won that massive pile of whisky from the superlative chaps (and chapettes) at Master of Malt back in December, the random assortment of tiny bottles yielded the possibility of one or 2 decent “vertical tastings”, or what normal people would call “multiple whiskies from the same distillery”. There were a couple of Mortlachs, a couple of Miyagikyous, and a good looking trio of Glengoyne whiskies.
Glengoyne was the first whisky distillery I ever visited (which I failed to get around to writing up in June 2004), and it confused me in the first instance for being a Highland whisky though it’s so close to Glasgow, but also because of it’s peat-free flavour profile more inkeeping with gems like Auchentoshan.
We’ve only tried one Glengoyne at Whiskysquad by this point – the English Merchants’ Choice bottling, which we enjoyed greatly at our Christmas Dinner tasting. So the more, the merrier really.
The first one we tried was Glengoyne 10 year old, which is pretty much their “default” bottling. It’s a perfectly fine whisky, which gives away vanilla, white chocolate, lightly spicy, herbal and clean flavours. And for about £26, it’s an absolute belter. I’d definitely use this as an introduction dram for someone who said that they didn’t like whisky.
The second, being the lightest colour of the trio, was another 10 year old, this time from the Douglas Laing bottlers’ Provenance range. This bottling came from a single cask, being a refill bourbon hogshead – that much seemed evident from the pale straw colour. We didn’t feel it gave much away scent-wise, and though the flavour had allusions to its 10yo brother, it was the runt of the litter. That’s ok. Not every whisky’s a roaring success, but they’re fun to try.
The third bottle contained the Glengoyne 17yo, and whether or not we biased our opinions due to doing a non-blind tasting, consensus between the pair of us was that we were right in flavour country now. A honey elixir of fruits (plums, baked apples, fresh cherry), roasted nuts & spice, with a decent body and an assertive but not unwelcome finish. Magnificent stuff, very drinkable indeed. I’d hesitate to fork out near £50 for it, although that’s more a comment on my tastes than a statement of value. I would happily drink it if someone else pointed a bottle in my direction!
By way of an interesting fact to tie up this post, the splendid chaps over at Connosr held an event up at the Glengoyne distillery recently and had their world famous Whisky Pod out and fully operational, so if you’d like to watch videos of some other people talking about other drams from the Glengoyne range and largely gesturing like Dr Strangelove, cliquez ici.