Tag Archives: Sherry Cask

Whisky & Wisdom 2007 Glenfarclas

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A private single cask Glenfarclas for whiskyandwisdom.com

I love sherried whisky. Auto-correct tells me that ‘sherried’ isn’t even a real word and it’s probably correct, but as a far as I’m concerned it should be. When I say sherried whisky, I’m referring to that gorgeous mahogany or ruby-coloured whisky that’s spent its life maturing ex-sherry casks, imparting rich notes of dried fruit, spice and sweetness.

Glenfarclas

I’ve been fortunate enough to taste many different sherried whiskies, ranging from three-month old spirit from an ex-sherry cask, all the way to a 1967 43 year old Longmorn that had the opacity of black coffee. In amongst all of those sherried whiskies I’ve also encountered the broad spectrum of what can make a sherried whisky great, and what can make some of them borderline undrinkable.

There’s sherried whisky out there that’s sulphur tainted, presenting notes of gunpowder, struck matches and – at worst – an eggy rotten gas vibe. I’ve also had the heavily oaked, tannic and overly bitter drams, ones that were totally out of whack and just didn’t seem to gel with the European Oak casks they were matured in. Or ones that were perhaps left in the cask too long. Then there’s the one-dimensional, super sweet, cloying drams that taste as though a good few litres of sherry was left in the cask before it was filled with spirit. The point I’m trying to make is that sherried whisky is incredibly alluring, but it can also be incredibly varied in quality. That’s especially the case when you’re talking about first fill, single cask offerings. Get it wrong and there’s nowhere to hide!

There are two distilleries that immediately spring to mind for me when I think of high-quality, heavily sherried whisky; GlenDronach and Glenfarclas. GlenDronach happens to be my vice and I find it hard to resist the urge to pick up a new single cask bottling whenever I come across one. I know someone who happens to feel the same about Glenfarclas, but he’s taken this love (or shall we say, obsession) one step further. He’s gone and bought himself half a damn cask! Enter; Andrew from whiskyandwisdom.com and his 2007 single cask Glenfarclas.

Glenfarclas 2

Nose

The nose on this thing is sherry magic. It’s so incredibly clean and clear (there isn’t a single hint of sulphur) with a nice balance of sweet and savoury notes. On the sweet front there’s plenty of classic dried fruit notes (saltanas, flame raisins, figs and dates), there’s damp brown sugar and a syrupy molasses/treacle element. On the savoury front, old leather sofas, tobacco, sour cherry scented solvent, furniture polish and cigar-box spice. There’s a faint herbal note too, maybe even some sooty coal, but only when you really go looking for it.

Palate

The palate is well-connected to the nose; it’s thick, chewy and has a great mouth-feel with syrupy toffee sweetness, dried fruit, sour plum jam and juicy raisins up front. The sweet notes give way to a rounded warming peppery spice and some oak. The heat from the alcohol is the last thing that greets your palate – exactly the way you would want it to.

Finish

Again, nicely balanced with a long warming finish, a hint of bitter citrus rind and some light peppermint/ menthol. Even on the finish it retains the syrupy notes from the palate, this time with some cinnamon spice.

I had to re-check the bottle. Yes, this is 60.5% abv but I honestly don’t think it noses or drinks like a whisky of that proof. It comes across as well balanced for something that’s a) so young, and b) from a single cask. Not that it needs it, but air only makes it better and despite being my first dram of the evening I’ve got no desire to add a dash of water.

Some final thoughts

This is textbook sherried whisky and I love it. When you see this thing in a bottle or in your glass you can’t help but notice the deep, rich colour. You know its natural and it screams sherry goodness. So often though that initial excitement is quashed when you cop a nose or palate of sulphur-taint, or something over-oaked, or even something that’s too sherry forward where there’s nothing but cloying jammy notes.

This, however, is none of the above. It delivers syrup-laden dried fruit, it delivers gentle spice and it does so in a marvellously chewy, oily and lingering way, leaving a big smile on your dial. I’m certainly no authority on the matter, but I know when I taste a quality, clean sherried whisky; one that ticks all the right boxes for me. And this is certainly one of them.

Whisky and Wisdom’s private bottling of Glenfarclas is available to purchase now through Whisky Empire. Thanks for the sample Andrew (but for the record, #GlenDronachForLife!)

Glendronach 1994 single cask

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Batch 9, Distilled 1994, 19 years old, Cask No. 3385, 53.4% ABV, Pedro Ximenez Sherry Puncheon, Speyside, Scotland

If you’re into heavily sherried whiskies, there’s a good chance you’ve heard of Glendronach. Their regular core range is pretty top-notch, consisting of four different offerings ranging in age from 12 through to 21 years.

The bottle being tasted isn’t actually part of their core range though. It’s part of their semi-annual limited release of ‘single cask’ expressions, which are bottled at natural cask strength. You don’t see these too often in Australia, so when a friend suggested I review his bottle, I wasn’t exactly going to say no!

Glendronach 1994

Look at that colour! It’s like treacle or golden syrup! I don’t know about you, but when I see a whisky that colour – and when I know that it’s natural colour – I get pretty damn excited.

Glendronach 1994 - Copper

The presentation of these bottles is pretty special – rich metallic brown packaging scribed in copper coloured lettering. The box is also lined in a sand colour suede-like material. You feel a real sense of occasion when you pick up and open the box on one of these.

Glendronach 1994 - NCF

Apart from being bottled at cask strength, all of Glendronach’s single cask releases are non-chill filtered (NCF) and bottled at their natural colour – something they’re quite proud of. This is as close as many of us will come to drinking straight out of a cask!

Glendronach 1994 - Label

This particular bottle is from batch 9 of their single cask releases. Distilled in 1994 and matured in a Pedro Ximenez Sherry Puncheon – one of the larger casks used in the whisky industry at around 500 litres in size.

Did you know…

When this particular batch of whisky was distilled in 1994, Glendronach still floor malted their own barley (instead of buying malted barley in from somewhere else).

As part of the malting process, they dried their barley over a coal and peat fuelled fire, resulting in a spirit that was peated to around 14 parts per million (PPM). This is nowhere near the ~55-60 PPM of something like an Ardbeg 10 year old, but it’s still pretty peaty for a Speyside whisky!

Nose

Immediately I got classic sweet PX sherry with some tarty notes in there – almost like tarty raisins or apricots.  Sniffing it again (and this might sound a bit crazy), I was reminded of caramelized peaches – you know, when you cut one in half, sprinkle brown sugar on it, add a knob of butter then put it under the grill in your oven. Lovely rich caramelized sugar and fruit notes, with a hint of burnt spice. A really deep nose that you can sniff and sniff and sniff.

If you leave this to sit for a good while in the glass it really opens up and the brown sugar raisin notes really come to the front quite nicely.

Palate

The first thing you notice is how thick, syrupy and tongue coating it is. Just brilliant. Sweet dried raisins, hint of spice, slight oakiness and a really faint sour fruit note – maybe orange marmalade? All of the flavours are really complimentary – no single one jumps out sharply at you.

Finish

The finish is long and warming, not fierce at all, a real winter chest warmer – which is kind of ironic considering I tried it on a 40 degree (104F) summer day in Sydney! Fruity sweetness eventually fades and some of the tannic oak starts to show through after a good few minutes.

Comments

Even though this is bottled at 53.4%, it’s incredibly drinkable and that extra few percent – combined with the non-chill filtering – really locks in a huge amount of flavour.

When I see that kind of ABV, I often consider adding a few drops of water, but I don’t think this needed any all. I did test it out, but I personally think it lost some of its magic. A bit of patience and some glass time is all this one needed to really shine.

Nant Sherry Cask

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Distillery bottling, 43% ABV, cask No. 31, bottle No. 39, NAS, Central Highlands, Tasmania

Seeing as though The Whisky Ledger is based in Australia, I thought it would be fitting to make one of the first entries a local whisky. This little gem hails from Australia’s only ‘highland’ distillery, Nant, which can be found in a quaint little Tasmanian town called Bothwell.

After heading an hour north of Hobart, you put your faith in your GPS and turn off a sealed road onto a slightly dodgy-looking dirt and gravel track. After a bit, your GPS starts blinking and telling you that you’re no longer driving on a road of any description. Stones start to flick up and clank against the side of your car and you start thinking about that little clause in your hire-car contract about avoiding roads like this… then before you know it, you’re greeted by this.

Nant

I could go on for pages about the distillery itself, it’s just spectacular and has some great history behind it. I’ll save that for another time though, as this post is all about the liquid.

Nant bottle

The Nant single malts have an almost apothecary styled presentation, not all that dissimilar to the Elements of Islay bottling. I like the fact they’ve gone down this path with a squat, broad bottle – something a bit different to your classic taller single malt bottles.

Nant label

This particular bottle was from an American oak sherry cask, which was cut down and re-coopered in Australia to a size of 100 litres. The labels are hand numbered with batch and bottle numbers, so you really know that you’re about to sample some small-batch, craft distilling.

Nose

Easy to tell it’s a sherry cask, but quite different from the sherried nose you get on a Scottish single malt – it’s sweeter, lighter and slightly creamy – not that all out rich red-fruit kind of nose. You could almost say it’s got sherried-bourbon characteristics, which could have something to do with the fact it’s matured in an American Oak cask (albeit, an ex-sherried one). Really easy to nose this one for a while.

Palate 

The nose carries through to the palate pretty well – nice medium mouth feel to it with some oils, initial sweetness, followed by spice and light alcohol burn. This release was pretty young (around three to four years), but it certainly doesn’t lack character.

Finish

The palate fades reasonably quickly to a long and slowly warming finish – you get this great, tingle at the front of your tongue, accompanied by a slightly creamy sherry coating at the back that just lasts and lasts.

This bottle has been open for around a year and has really evolved. At first it was a bit on the thin side and the younger spirit shone through, but with some air it’s really opened up and matured. It’s got some nice body to it now and those creamy sherry notes have become more pronounced.

I recently had the pleasure of re-trying their bourbon barrel cask-strength (which rates in the mid-90s by Jim Murray) and a port-cask version, bottled at 48% which had a pretty amazing palate to it.

There’s some really good stuff coming out of them there hills – one to keep an eye on for sure.