Glengoyne: my new home dram
14. Glengoyne (12yo, 43%)
I've moved house recently which has given me a new 'home' distillery. The very pretty little Glengoyne distillery in Dumgoyne is only about 8 miles or so from where I live now so it seemed as good a spot as any to continue my virtual tour after a couple of years' break. (I'm not in a hurry to complete the tour, so a couple of years maturing quietly is perfectly acceptable to my plans, such as they are).
So, Glengoyne.
The distillery's USP these days is the fact that its products are entirely unpeated with the barley air-dried only, just as it has been since the distillery first began producing whisky (legally) in 1833. The reason this drying method was originally chosen has everything to do with a dearth of peat in the Dumgoyne area and nothing to do with trying to achieve a certain flavour profile or creating a marketing lever. But the air-drying tradition has been honoured for the best part of 200 years now and, as happens with these things, has been seized upon and seamlessly converted into a brand USP by the marketers.
The distillery also makes a fair amount of noise about having "the slowest stills in Scotland", although what impact that has on the quality of the finished product is up for debate, even if it does sound like an eminently Good Thing. More exposure to the copper surely has some beneficial impact.
One minor point of petty contention is the use of the "Highland Single Malt" appellation, presumably to appeal to the export market dollar (or pound, or yen). The use of the phrase may be entirely legitimate from a technical point of view - Dumgoyne falls just within the official demarcation line for where the Highlands start - but nobody from that neck of the woods seriously thinks they live in the Highlands. Come on, we're talking about a suburb of Glasgow here. (Auchentoshan is less than 14 miles away but has to settle for the decidedly less glamorous and less marketable "Lowland" epithet.)
Once again and in direct contravention of the 'virtual' parameters of this tour, I actually physically visited the distillery - or the distillery shop, to be more precise - and picked up a bottle of the 12yo, however sorely tempted I was by the Teapot Dram V. The glorious smells wafting through the distillery air on a damp Sunday afternoon softened the blow of having to pay a couple of quid more for the bottle than I would have done if I'd just sat at home on the sofa and bought it online.
Tasting notes, after a fashion:
No caramel in this one and it's a lovely deep gold, much richer than the 10 yo than you'd expect from just an extra couple of years in casks.
Big supersweet fairground toffee apples on the nose with only a touch of the lemon zest promised on the label and a very subtle coconut sweetness. Dry wood too from the mix of sherry and bourbon casks. Fruity and light and bright.
In the mouth its clean and crisp and fresh, but somehow also soft and warm with surprising richness and more body than expected. Quite grassy still with lots of green apples and then an aftershock of vanilla and more dry wood and honeyed sweetness. Big, bold, drying finish that tapers off very, very slowly to leave a warm glow and a wee slice of green apple stuck to a bit of dry oak, lodged hard against your tongue.
Add a splash of local water - I only live a few miles away - and the rough edges that I love so much fall away and you're left with a super sweet honey-apple-vanilla dessert whisky, perfect for after dinner or even for a night like tonight under a warm summer dusky Glaswegian sky.
4/5
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| A lovely wee distillery lodged at the bottom of Dumgoyne Hill. |
I've moved house recently which has given me a new 'home' distillery. The very pretty little Glengoyne distillery in Dumgoyne is only about 8 miles or so from where I live now so it seemed as good a spot as any to continue my virtual tour after a couple of years' break. (I'm not in a hurry to complete the tour, so a couple of years maturing quietly is perfectly acceptable to my plans, such as they are).
So, Glengoyne.
The distillery's USP these days is the fact that its products are entirely unpeated with the barley air-dried only, just as it has been since the distillery first began producing whisky (legally) in 1833. The reason this drying method was originally chosen has everything to do with a dearth of peat in the Dumgoyne area and nothing to do with trying to achieve a certain flavour profile or creating a marketing lever. But the air-drying tradition has been honoured for the best part of 200 years now and, as happens with these things, has been seized upon and seamlessly converted into a brand USP by the marketers.
The distillery also makes a fair amount of noise about having "the slowest stills in Scotland", although what impact that has on the quality of the finished product is up for debate, even if it does sound like an eminently Good Thing. More exposure to the copper surely has some beneficial impact.
One minor point of petty contention is the use of the "Highland Single Malt" appellation, presumably to appeal to the export market dollar (or pound, or yen). The use of the phrase may be entirely legitimate from a technical point of view - Dumgoyne falls just within the official demarcation line for where the Highlands start - but nobody from that neck of the woods seriously thinks they live in the Highlands. Come on, we're talking about a suburb of Glasgow here. (Auchentoshan is less than 14 miles away but has to settle for the decidedly less glamorous and less marketable "Lowland" epithet.)
Once again and in direct contravention of the 'virtual' parameters of this tour, I actually physically visited the distillery - or the distillery shop, to be more precise - and picked up a bottle of the 12yo, however sorely tempted I was by the Teapot Dram V. The glorious smells wafting through the distillery air on a damp Sunday afternoon softened the blow of having to pay a couple of quid more for the bottle than I would have done if I'd just sat at home on the sofa and bought it online.
Tasting notes, after a fashion:No caramel in this one and it's a lovely deep gold, much richer than the 10 yo than you'd expect from just an extra couple of years in casks.
Big supersweet fairground toffee apples on the nose with only a touch of the lemon zest promised on the label and a very subtle coconut sweetness. Dry wood too from the mix of sherry and bourbon casks. Fruity and light and bright.
In the mouth its clean and crisp and fresh, but somehow also soft and warm with surprising richness and more body than expected. Quite grassy still with lots of green apples and then an aftershock of vanilla and more dry wood and honeyed sweetness. Big, bold, drying finish that tapers off very, very slowly to leave a warm glow and a wee slice of green apple stuck to a bit of dry oak, lodged hard against your tongue.
Add a splash of local water - I only live a few miles away - and the rough edges that I love so much fall away and you're left with a super sweet honey-apple-vanilla dessert whisky, perfect for after dinner or even for a night like tonight under a warm summer dusky Glaswegian sky.
4/5
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