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Nose: Vanilla and dried fruit , honey , cereals and a citrusy edge. A lovely nose. Just like we like them! Palate : Creamy and rich . sherry goodness can definitely be found here. Lots of dried fruit , sweet honeyed and mouth coating. Very nice. Finish ; wood , spice (ginger) cocoa and chocolate, some nuttiness as well. For international deliveries, including the USA, use the 'Change Location' link above to estimate prices and delivery costs in your local currency. Find out more about international delivery The built-up vapors are sneakers-and-solventy (walnut oil and balsamic). Subsequent breaths are shortbready (cereal-vanilla-butter) hay, with vanilla and faint strawberry follow-up. Taste: A good level of viscosity and weight from 43% ABV – delivering a bigger, brighter and richer sherried experience. Raspberries, oranges, cherries and pears alongside raisins and sultanas – perhaps with a tarter element – unripe plums or rhubarb for example. Plenty of chocolate here, sitting with cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg and some dusty oak. Fairly one dimensional, but perfectly tasty all the same. Reduction (which is far from needed) dampens the spicing, but ripens the fruits, it also adds some oloroso nuttiness into the mix. Whiskybase B.V. (“Whiskybase”, “we” or “us”, company details below) offers a whisky enthusiasts online platform that provides its members access to the most comprehensive, transparent and trusted resource of whisky bottles and allows and stimulates its members to contribute information about whisky bottles to the platform (“Service”).
Nose: A deep sherried pillow, stuffed with honey-soaked bananas and vanilla-poached peach skins, a duvet of sweetened carrots and lemon cake, and a marshmallow comforter blanket makes this a comfortable, warm and sleepy experience. Glendronach has also incorporated a randomly selected team to blind taste samples on occasion. This team is ever-changing and can involve anyone from the production team, members of the bottling line, and gift shop workers. This means there is an additional level of quality control incorporated in the process– a bit more due diligence to ensure the liquid remains as it should.
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GlenDronach has a laser-like focus on “richly sherried” single malts, and the whisky reviewed here, dubbed “The Original,” is aged for 12 years in a combination of Pedro Ximenez and Oloroso sherry casks. Both the GlenDronach 12 yo Original and the 15 yo Revival are among my favorite sherried whiskies. I regard them as subtle and complex versions of the same overall experience. If my tasting evening includes GlenDronach in the lineup, I'll include both expressions and enjoy the natural progression from one to the other. Yet the modern Glendronach Original must have been made from steam-distilled spirit since around 2017. Evidently the change in spirit character was hidden or smoothed by sherry casks and skillful blending, and if they can balance that big of a change we’d imagine that the present challenge should be a doddle for someone as talented as Rachel Barrie. If there wasn’t an uproar after the seismic switch from coal to steam powered distillation, it seems unlikely that a change as relatively minor as chill filtration should make that much of a difference.
For starters… flavor. This stuff is great. I can’t attest to how much the PX finishing adds to the already sherried malt since I didn’t taste it before the finishing, but I can tell you that as it is now it’s fantastic and I honestly don’t know why more people aren’t talking about this stuff. It’s rich, it’s supple, it’s flavorful and because it’s not incredibly popular at the moment it’s relatively cheap. A tasty little gem from a distillery that flies under most folks radar… enjoy it while you can. GlenDronach 12 year Review It’s also undeniable that a great many of the previous bottlings from the 1980s and 1990s, while different to the Walker Glendronachs, are absolutely fantastic whiskies in their own right, however uninterested the paying public were at the time - and those are the whiskies that were almost certainly both chill filtered and coloured.Matured solely in sherry casks, I was expecting a humdinger of a sherry bomb here. Surprisingly, I got something somewhat different. The nose offers nice and very sweet sherry. I have samples of sherry in my cabinet and the smell reminds me of Manzanilla or Oloroso, the Glendronach 12yo is not as sweet as pure PX. But of course this is irrelevant, the final whisky is what counts. I am getting aromas like sweet buttery (pop)corn, crème brûlée, honey, dark berries, ripe sweet apples, bananas and plum. It’s 12 years of tastiness all rolled up and dumped into a 750ml glass bottle. It’s a really nice, accessible and tasty single malt that just about anyone could easily grab off the shelf and enjoy. There’s enough complexity for “seasoned pros” to enjoy while not so overly complex that less experienced drinkers would feel lost or overwhelmed. It’s a simple, straightforward and tasty whisky that I’m enjoying every single second of.
Nevertheless, the presentation of a whisky surely gives us an insight into the attitude and mindset of a producer when bottling an expression (be it a special release or a core range product). The distiller and blender are saying to us, “This is the best product we can deliver. This is our spirit, and we are proud.” With more and more new distilleries releasing inaugural bottlings and beginning to distribute their core range, we are seeing these three requirements met from almost all of them. They aren’t produced for blends: they are setting up their stall and proudly displaying their liquid in as natural a form as they can. Taste: The breeze from the window carries in a warm draft of shortbread, apple and demerara-glazed vegetables, while the nighttime din of orange squash and chocolate covered orange peel serenades our slumber. To be honest, I was searching for the 15YO, but my choices were the 12 and 18. Well why not start at the beginning? This was right around 54 dollars in Nashville TN. The 18 was selling for 115. So the take-away for me is this: Glendronach 12 is the same whisky as it’s always been, produced in what can reasonably be assumed is the same way. It is simply exhibiting batch variation – much like every other batch-produced whisky out there. Consistency in whisky batches, for some, is a comfort; they know what they’re getting each time they buy a bottle, and that’s what they want. But for others, consistency is pedestrian. I’m a celebrant of variation – I want to see how a distillery progresses and morphs over the years. But the Glendronach 12 that you buy today is as near as – dammit –the same as the Glendronach 12 you bought a few years ago, just with a few subtle batch differences.
In any case, I’m off to buy a 12yo Glendronach. That’s something I didn’t expect to say anytime soon. Thanks, Hamish and Dougie– this deep dive was needed. It’s fair to say that this particular tweak to what is a much-loved bottling has not gone over very well in some quarters. Having seen the strong reaction to the change on various social media fora, we thought it might be interesting to talk a little about the history of Glendronach 12 year Old to put the current furore into context. We’ll also discuss this particular change and how it may or may not affect Glendronach 12 Year Old.
Now I know that no chill filtration and 46% ABV isn’t the be-all and end-all in whisky. There are expressions out there that don’t meet these presentation standards but still deliver a great experience when tasting. The palate starts a bit metallic. There are subtle oak spices and sweet dark fruits. I am also getting a very little sulfuric touch. The aftertaste reveals some milk chocolate and the typical sherry influence. Delving further into the world of Glendronach. I would not call this one representative of the brand as far as I know, since it is more malty/bourbony than the older and more heavily sherried varieties. Unless mandatory applicable law provides otherwise, your use of and membership to the Service are exclusively governed by Dutch law. We shall first try to settle any dispute over a dram of whisky. Disputes that cannot be settled over multiple drams of whisky shall be solely submitted to the court of Amsterdam, The Netherlands unless mandatory applicable law provides otherwise.
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Thereafter, however, the picture gets rather more complicated. After the vintage statements were dropped various non-vintage Glendronach 12 year olds were bottled, still in the original dumpy green glass bottles. However, at some point in the late 1970s, after Glendronach’s parent company Teacher’s had been bought by Allied Breweries, the UK bottlings switched to 70 proof (40%). Italian and Spanish bottlings of the 12 year old remained at 43% for a little longer.
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