Glen Grant, a four-week cluster

Welcome to HQ for this four-week cluster of Glen Grant single malt reviews! I have a dozen (oops, I just found 13) of them lined up and ready to go, including one bottle from my own whisky cabinet. These whiskies will be tasted and reviewed by age, youngest to oldest, though I may throw curveball if needed.

First, a brief history of the distillery.

Photo By S8z11

Originally dubbed Drumbain by the Brothers Grant in 1840, Glen Grant distillery produced whisky sold as a single malt as far back as the 1870s. Such was its popularity that Major James Grant Jr. (proprietor for fifty-nine years) commissioned a second distillery to be built in the late 1890s. Glen Grant Number Two (actual name) ran for four whole years before it was converted to malting floors, kilns and storage. The original Glen Grant distillery remained solely in the Grant family until 1953 when it merged with Glenlivet Distillery's company, forming The Glenlivet and Glen Grant Distillers Ltd.

By the 1960s, Glen Grant was selling hundreds of thousands of bottles of their five-year-old single malt in Italy as other single malt brands were just getting off the ground. Number Two was reopened in 1965, gaining an actual appellation, Caperdonich.

The business deals continued into the 1970s, as The Glenlivet and Glen Grant Distillers Ltd. merged with Longmorn-Glenlivet Ltd. and Hill Thompson & Co., creating The Glenlivet Distillers. A few years later this company was swallowed up by the Seagram's behemoth. When Seagram's was split up in 2001, Pernod Ricard nabbed Glen Grant. Campari then bought the distillery in 2006, and has remained the owner ever since.

Back in 1861, Glen Grant was the first distillery to install electric lighting, powered by an on-site turbine. Floor malting continued at the distillery until 1962, after which its malt was externally sourced. The distillery's stills were direct fired by coal until the 1970s, then it was gas, then a mix of gas and coal and steam. They were all switched to indirect steam firing prior to 2000. Caperdonich was retired two years later and its site was bulldozed in 2011. Now on its own, Glen Grant is one of the rare large distilleries with its bottling hall on site.

Photo by S8z11

Okay, history lesson complete.

Hints about what I'm reviewing? I'm glad you asked. Without spoiling too much, I can say that all, or at least most, of these Glen Grants were distilled in direct-fired stills. Most of the whiskies have been matured in bourbon casks. But not all. The biggest question may be: "Will there be any floor-maltings-era old G&M Glen Grant?"

You bet your gorgeous ass there will be.

I'm emptying the stables. Drinking the......horses? But just be patient. We'll start in the 1990s tomorrow.

The Glen Grants:

1. Glen Grant 13 year old 1993 James MacArthur Old Masters, cask 121926 - "I'm not sure one could ask for much more out of a 13 year old bourbon barrel Speysider."
2. Glen Grant 16 year old 1992 Cellar Reserve (OB) - "So, Glen Grant can be a fighter."
3. Glen Grant 17 year old 1995 Duncan Taylor Dimensions, cask 85122 - "...the cuddliest one so far. The spirit seems lighter than the other two..."
4. Glen Grant 20 year old 1992 Whisky-Fässle - "...fruity but balanced, quite drinkable. No weird oak notes."
5. Glen Grant 20 year old 1992 Maltbarn, Release 12 - "The sherry and oak are nearly absent, which can be a great thing, but in this instance the cask seems almost neutral/inactive."
6. Glen Grant 22 year old 1992 Single Malts of Scotland, cask 35936 - "The smoky, earthy element brings a complexity missing from almost all of the other five GGs."

Assessing the Glen Grant cluster at the halfway point

7. Glen Grant 25 year old 1988 SMWS 9.84 - "...who knows what happened with this cask, but I couldn't find any Glen Grant within."
8. Glen Grant 12 year old, bottled in the 1970s - "...the quality here, at this age, at this strength, is remarkable and baffling."
9. Glen Grant 25 year old Royal Wedding Reserve, bottled in 1981 - "Subtle and comfy, it's the sort of whisky I could picture drinking way too much of while grilling in the evening."
10. Glen Grant 36 year old 1967 Sherry Wood from Scott's Selection - "...musty dunnage, dusty old books and ultra-nutty sherry......[A] swirl of guava and yuzu juices..."
11. Caperdonich 38 year old 1972 Duncan Taylor Rarest of the Rare, cask 7460 - "Mmmmmmmango on the nose......ginger candy, cardamom, blood oranges and candied yuzu peel."
12. Glen Grant 50 year old 1958 Gordon & MacPhail - "This whisky was a thrill, and I was happy to set it free."
13. Glen Grant 56 year old 1955 Gordon & MacPhail - "...reads like an excellent sherried whisky half its age but with just a bit more bite..."

Concluding the cluster 

Sources:
--MacLean, Charles. Whiskypedia. A Compendium of Scotch Whisky. New York, NY: Skyhorse Publishing, 2010.
--Ronde, Ingvar (Ed.). Malt Whisky Yearbook 2021. Shropshire, UK: MagDig Media. 2020
--www.scotchwhisky.com

2021 will be different......on the blog, I mean

Yeah, sorry, I can't make any promises about everything else in 2021, but Diving for Pearls will take a different route than in previous years. It's going to be a year made up almost entirely of deep dives. There won't be one-week themes, there will be two- to six-week themes, often focusing on a single distillery or brand. I've previously tested this out with Ben Nevis, Glenfiddich and Black & White. But this year the review clusters will be longer and often consecutive.

I recognize this may not be a popular approach, and I may lose some or many of my readers. It also doesn't follow the current system through which we all receive information, with new data being blasted constantly in our direction. And that's fine. Whisky reviews are disposable things, but I'd rather create something more interesting for me, something potentially more constructive for someone out there or right here.

By taking this approach I am not criticizing bloggers who post a half-dozen or more whisky reviews in one sitting. That's their approach, and they cover a hell of a lot more ground than I do. I just don't have the capacity, with my health or my time, to burn through whisky at that pace. And I wouldn't trust my senses after the third pour anyway. I'm not built like that.

2021 will not only mark my tenth full year of whisky reviews, but it may also bring my 1500th review. So I'm going to try to focus, slow things down and maybe learn something. Feel free to duck in and duck out as I go down this path. Each extensive series will have a HQ/Home post with links to each review, so hopefully folks can follow along. This blog doesn't work without its readers, but it's also worthless if the writer isn't fully engaged with his subject matter. We begin again tomorrow.

Killing Whisky History, Episode 35: Dewar's 12 year old Malt Whisky, bottled between 1963 and 1975

Called Pure Malt in Europe, this DCL-era Dewar's expression was labeled "Malt...a blend" in the US. I believe this one has a large portion of malt whisky from distilleries during their last decades of floor malting. And it ain't White Label.

Speyside Distillery 21 year old 1996 Old Particular, cask DL12019

Speyside Distillery produced some of the internet's least loved single malts of the past two decades — most notably Cu Dubh, Drumguish, Beinn Dubh The Black — before rebranding themselves as "Spey" and shipping a lot of bottles to China. The Spey brand has crept west, but due to the distillery's early sins I've been unmotivated to try the new stuff.

But recently there have been some independently bottled whisky from Speyside Distllery (not to be mistaken with A Speyside Distillery, which is usually Glenfarclas, and never confusing) that have received positive reviews online. So, since it's a new year......why not?

Distillery: Speyside

Ownership: Speyside Distillers Co.

Region: almost not in Speyside actually

Bottler: Douglas Laing

Range: Old Particular

Age: 21 years old (Sept 1996 to Sept 2017)

Maturation: refill butt

Cask #: DL12019
Outturn: 362 bottles

Alcohol by Volume: 51.5%

(from a bottle split)

Before continuing, I would like to direct your attention to a picture of this whisky in my Glencairn glass.

No filters or photo doctoring here. This whisky is redder than Idaho. I know that tint excites many people — which is why Macallan tried to steal everyone's money with Color — but my favorite whisky hue is five-beer-piss, so a whisky darker than a Manhattan cocktail doesn't inspire positive thoughts here. Sure it's a "refill" butt, but what did they do to that cask before refilling it?

NEAT

The nose is much subtler than expected, more on nuts than dried fruits. Walnuts, pecans and almonds up front. Soil and metal in the back. Hints of roses and white peaches. A dollop of toffee pudding. The palate is......good. Very good. Roasted nuts, roasted grains, roasted game. Salt and earth. Truffle salt almonds. Essences of dried cherries and dried cranberries without the sweetness. It finishes with truffle salt, bitter chocolate, bitter coffee and a hint of copper.

DILUTED TO ~46%abv, or ¾ tsp of water per 30mL whisky
The truffle salt almond note now appears in the nose, along with mocha and dry soil. Hints of pipe tobacco and cranberry juice drift around the edges. Salt and blackest baking chocolate lead the palate. Very very dry sherry. Again the sugarless dried cherry and cranberry notes. It finishes dry AF and as bitter as my 🖤.

WORDS WORDS WORDS
Speyside Distillery versus Octomore, who ya got?

Would you believe Speyside? Yes, the whisky is mostly cask. And though ultra-sherried whiskies don't always do it for me, and dry sherry can be a bit difficult for my palate, somehow this particular style really worked for me. Truffle salt + nuts + bitterness + earth + just a hint of fruit = 🙂. If only more sherry cask whiskies were like this! And affordable!

Availability - Probably sold out
Pricing - ???
Rating - 89

Octomore 12 year old 2007 Event Horizon, for Feis Ile 2019

Amidst all of Bruichladdich's words about this 2019 Feis Ile release, there isn't a single mention of the whole "Event Horizon" name, so I'm just going to assume they're referencing the craptacular "You can't leave, she won't let you" turdburger Sam Neill ham sandwich I enjoyed in the theater twenty-three (o.m.g.) years ago, rather than a black hole's gravitational sphere.

According to that same marketing blurb, this is the oldest Octomore release yet, and from 100% sherry casks. A big thank you to Doctor Weir Springbank for the sample!

Distillery: Bruichladdich
Brand: Octomore
Ownership: Remy Cointreau
Region: Islay
Age: minimum 12 years (2007-2019)
Maturation: four (oloroso and PX) sherry butts
Outturn: 2000 bottles
PPM: 162.2
Alcohol by Volume: 55.7%
Chillfiltered? No
Caramel Colorant? No

NEAT
Yep, it stinks up the whole room. The nose has lots of everything, fruity and nutty sherries, hefty smoke and soot, orange and cherry jellos, pine needles and briny shellfish. The absurdly sweet palate mixes cinnamon syrup with moo shu plum sauce with apricot jam. Tart oranges and barbecue sauce. Charred beef and ham. Ashes from a grass fire. Barbecue chicken wings lead off the finish, followed by salt, sugar, black pepper and apricot jam under a blanket of smoke.

DILUTED TO ~50%abv, or ⅔ tsp of water per 30mL whisky
The nose becomes mintier and more chocolatey, but with a simpler peat smoke. There's more rubber and plastic, and a blob of almond butter. More char and ash in the palate now. The moo shu plum sauce remains, now combined with smoked chipotles and woody bitterness. The sticky sweet finish is all berry jams and citrus marmalades and wood smoke.

WORDS WORDS WORDS
With its outrageous peat levels and high abv, Octomore was designed to be loud. Three year olds can't easily find their inside voices, and it's understandable when five or six year olds struggle to do the same. But at 12 years? I need ear plugs. Thus when a spirit with a 162.2ppm peat level is left in hyperactive juicy casks for more than a decade, the resulting deafening volume is no accident.

That's not to say this whisky is bad, rather it's to illustrate that "depth" (the official wording) isn't gained from this sort of maturation, in fact almost all of the 5yo bourbon cask Octomores I've had were more complex than this. The Event Horizon works best as a pairing whisky, likely to work well with chocolate or vanilla desserts, even better with a cigar. And despite the above critique, I also encourage you to drink this at full power because dilution renders the whisky's third act just as messy at the film's.

An odd start to 2021.

Availability - Secondary market
Pricing - was £175 at Feis Ile, though it's a lot more now!
Rating - 84 neat only

Floki Sheep Dung Smoked Reserve Icelandic Malt

There are two kinds of people in this world. Those who look at a smoldering pile of feces and say, "That's a metaphor," and those who look at a smoldering pile of feces and say, "Let's smoke some malted barley."

Halli Thorkelsson of Eimverk Distillery in Iceland is of the second group, and today's brown fluid is the result of his team's efforts. Dried sheep poop has long been a legitimate and quite renewable fuel source from Ulaanbaatar to Reykjavík. So if the Scots use peat smoke to dry their barley, why shouldn't an Icelander burn some patties? I'd read somewhere that Eimverk Distillery was only going to produce ten casks of this young malt, but now they're up to cask 33 because apparently this is the shit.

I have been waiting for more than two years to drink this. May there never be a more appropriate time for it.

Distillery: Eimverk
Brand: Floki
Region: Iceland
Age: Less than 3 years
Maturation: American oak

Bottling year: 2017 or 2018

Alcohol by Volume: 47%
Chillfiltered? No
Caramel Colorant? No
(from a purchased sample)

NOTES

Nose: One can smell the dried grasses that had passed through these ruminant ungulates. The nose is slightly wooly too, or is it the wool that smells of dung? Then there are notes of those little petting zoo feed nuggets......which makes me question what those things are made of. Beneath those genuine farmy notes one may find juniper, Slivovitz, honeydew and diesel. Reducing it to 43%abv mellows the nose, turning those sheep-ish notes to a grassy smoke. Honeydew and pears still linger, and maybe a hint of eau de vie.

Palate: You know that smell of grass clippings after the rain. Imagine it as a flavor. That's this Floki's first layer. Then cinnamon syrup, barley and the aforementioned feed nuggets sit in the middle. The palate sweetens beneath, developing blood oranges with time. (What, do you not like the words "blood" and "feces" in the same post?) Diluted to 43%abv, the malt simplifies. It's peppery, sweet, and slightly grassy with a hint of orange. A bit closer to familiar malt whisky.

Finish: It's a grassy eau de vie with a little bit of cinnamon, copper and soil. It becomes fruitier at 43%abv, with notes of pears and apples.

First the score, then the conclusion:
Rating - 82

WORDS WORDS WORDS

There's no need to fear this stool-smoked malt. My own expectations were screwed up because of the word "Dung". Having now tried the malt, I wouldn't mind buying a bottle. Yes it is a little more, say, organic than most of us are used to but it's not like drinking out of a porta potty. It isn't even distilled feces, or a mutton steak for that matter. I find myself drawn to this young malt, though I had anticipated horrors.

I could proffer a thought like, When life gives you shit, make whisky. But that's not really valid. There are days, months and years in our lives that devastate us. When this happens we can admit the darkness of our moment and not try to spin it all into an immediate growing experience. Perhaps there will be time to learn later when our ghosts aren't so near, but this is happening now. We will endure but we will not be the same. May there be good in that, someday. May you all stay healthy and safe. And may 2020 now fuck right off.

The burden of single cask single malt, and also Ardmore 13 year old 2006 SMWS 66.161

I've already tried today's whisky, and my tasting notes lie here in front of me. Despite ending its maturation in a brief first-fill charred ex-red wine barrique finish, this Ardmore isn't as much of a flop as I had anticipated. But it did leave me thinking about its need to exist.

SMWS has released scores of hogshead-matured Ardmores (see the two I reviewed just this week). I can't imagine this whisky was superb when it was pulled from its first cask, a hoggie, after 12 years, before it was primed and prettied in its second vessel. Though the wine cask finish didn't mangle the whisky, why did this even need to be released as a single cask single malt at all? Because, despite fads and pandemics and tariffs and Brexits, the single malt marketplace is still humming along. Single cask single malt has become one of the most expensive spirits in history. And those single casks keep selling out. But does single cask single malt always represent scotch whisky in its finest form? It's certainly close to being scotch whisky in its most unadulterated state, but does that mean it drinks or smells best in that form?

When drinking casually (as in, no notes!), I now reach for small(-ish) batch official bottlings and dusty blends. My nose and palate have confirmed those whiskies are no less complex, satisfying and reliable than single casks, in fact they're often more so. I gain more respect for the blending craft with each passing year, and I'm beginning to believe that many mediocre-to-decent single casks could have been better utilized in a high-quality blend, vatting or small batch single malt. I'm not saying 1 + 2 = 4. Rather, 1 + 2 may in fact equal 3, though it takes tremendous skill to get there.

I stopped reviewing current bestselling blended whiskies some time ago due to the grim quality I've found in many of them. This isn't intended as a dig at individual blenders, nor do I think it's due to some sort of corporate conspiracy beyond general capitalism. Taking even a cursory look at the demand for single malt whisky, one can surmise the supply of good malt available to blenders is at one of its lowest points in the history of the craft. If the good stuff sells better and higher on its own, then that's how it will be offered. And blenders can't create the same art with fewer quality options for their palates and palettes.

I won't tell you that all old blends are amazing. There have always been plenty of stinkers. But many of the blends from the '40s through the '80s were fabulous. Even my open 1970s J&B Rare has become the best highball scotch I've ever had. The flavors, the facets, the maltiness in previous decades' blends leads me to believe that during eras of small, or nonexistent, demand for single malts, whisky companies had better options for their blenders.

That brings me back to today's whisky. Was this Ardmore malt (and its drinkers) best served by depositing its hogshead's contents into a potentially hyperactive cask for a short period of time? Or would it have been better as a pivotal element in an upscale Teacher's blend, or a Compass Box vatting? I don't know. Not too long ago, I would have chosen the single cask because Purity. But now, I'd lean towards the latter.

Distillery: Ardmore (SMWS 66)
Ownership: Beam Suntory
Region: Highlands (Eastern)
Independent Bottler: Scotch Malt Whisky Society
Age: 13 years (6 March 2006 - 2019)
Maturation: ~12 years in a hogshead then ~1 year in a first-fill charred ex-red wine barrique

Cask#: 66.161
Outturn: 295

'Quirky' name: Chateau du pork scratching
Alcohol by Volume: 58.1%
Chillfiltered? No
Caramel Colorant? No
(from a bottle split)

NEAT
None of the suggest meaty notes appear in the nose, instead there's cocoa, fabric, marshmallow fluff, cherry jam and jalapeños. The peat appears in the form of chocolate-dipped moss. The palate begins with a fizzy combination of cherry-flavored Tylenol, mint leaves and Dr. Brown's cream soda. Hints of herbal bitterness and blackberry jam float beneath. Cherries, tart and sweet, lead the finish, followed by salt and burlap.

DILUTED TO ~46%abv, or 1½ tsp of water per 30mL whisky
The nose shows considerable improvement. It's more herbal, vegetal and nutty. It's even slightly earthy. Cocoa, butterscotch, marzipan and raspberry jam appear here and there. The palate remains sweet and berried (a joke!?), with raspberries in whipped cream, but some sea salt, pepper and bitterness provide additional angles. It finishes with a cherry/ginger syrup, a pinch of salt and squeeze of lemon.

WORDS WORDS WORDS
Despite my fears, this was not worse than 66.32. In fact, with a little added water, this Ardmore was very approachable. Though the spirit does seem hindered, tragedy is avoided. It is not "strangely sweet, gloopy" (what an odd way to pitch your whisky) despite SMWS's label notes.

Before finishing this sample I looked at the remaining whisky in my glass and wondered what the point of this whisky was. And that triggered all those paragraphs above. I'm thankful to have had just 60mL of this whisky rather 750mL. Had I a full bottle I'd immediately initiate some foolish vattings, attempting to find a better whisky.

Availability - Sold out
Pricing - was £61 one year ago
Rating - 80 with water