Review 81
7/11/12
Glenfiddich 12 Year: 40% abv
Glenfiddich. If you knew we were doing Scotches, you’d probably have guessed this was coming. This is one of the biggest, and well known Scotch distilleries in the World, pioneering single malt production around the WWII time period. Glenfiddich is a Speyside malt, but that’ll get delved into deeper in other reviews. Don’t want to get nerdy with the historical references, but just for the context, most companies regarded global spread of single malts was foolish, so you kind of owe Glenfiddich at least one bottle of purchase for allowing Scotch to be widely available on a global scale.
The real question, though, is if their volume of production has influenced the quality of their spirit. What we’re reviewing today is their flagship Scotch, the 12 Year Old. Yeah, he’s the young one in the bunch, but Glenfiddich threw this Scotch in a bourbon cask and a sherry butt before bottling it. Stop your giggling! (A “butt” is a type of tall, skinny oak cask made from European Oak; it is the most commonly used type of cask for sherry wine) Now that we’ve got your immaturity under control, let’s move forward. Enough of the babbling; what does this son-of-a-gun taste like?
Well, we started with the nose, which gives off some interesting, but limited flavors of malt, vanilla, cherry, sherried oak, and a hint of salt. We had some questions, but we feel there is a slight influence of hot cinnamon in the nose as well. The taste luckily gives you more to bite off of. The taste is sweet with molasses and vanilla, but also contributing defined spiciness of cinnamon and ginger as well. There is a tangy note which becomes more prominent with water, revealing some mix of orange and lemon. Finally, and you’ll hear this from everybody, but there is some pear, and even some apple to this whiskey. It isn’t until the finish that you’ll get a stronger sherry presence.
Not like Macallan 12, but this definitely has a sweet hay taste in the finish, coupled with some grainy oatmeal and caramel. You still get those fruity notes that carry through, with some red apple and pear, and a nice cinnamon residual at the end. The finish is medium-long so you get to enjoy it a bit. Overall, we prefer this over Glenlivet’s 12 Year Scotch, but they’re really worlds apart. That being said, this isn’t the best Scotch out there, and you should definitely keep different ones.
Score: 8.0/10
No comments:
Post a Comment