I may have peaked too early
2. Glenfiddich (15yo Solera vat, 40%)
Not having much of a plan in mind as to how I tackle a whisky from every distillery, there's no reason why Glenfiddich shouldn't be next on the list, being as the Tesco nearest where I was last night (Horley, Surrey) was doing nearly a fiver off a wee 20cl bottle of 15yo Solera. Hadn't actually intended to buy any whisky in the supermarket as I far prefer to buy from smaller, locally owned independents that do it at least partly for the love of it, but a fiver off is a fiver off.
I was actually more interested in what sort of range a large Tesco stocked - not bad, but not great, if you're interested, and not very helpfully merchandised - so this is truly an impulse purchase. The intention was to taste it properly last night, but a couple of glasses of wine and a World Cup football match later and I wasn't in the right place to be giving it my best tasting shot.
That's not to say I didn't have a couple of glasses - and the word that sticks with me most from sipping away last night is 'elegant'.
But how will it fare today? (And I'm still coming to terms with drinking whisky in the afternoon, even if it is with something approaching reasonable justification.)
So, Glenfiddich. Think it's still the biggest selling brand name in whisky and it claims to be the Most Awarded Whisky In The World on its website. (The website is well worth a nosy if you've got 5 mins, especially the family history bit.) It's certainly one of the first one or two that non-Scots think of when they think whisky.
The distillery remains family owned (by William Grant & Sons), which is strikingly unusual these days, and has been since 1887. Mind you, the family's worth around £1.9bn, according to the latest Sunday Times Rich List, making it the richest family in the world, so the fact that they've never sold it is hardly a surprise.
Tasting notes after a fashion:
Iain Banks, who sort of inspired this blog with his book Raw Spirit, more or less refers to the Glenfiddich 21yo Gran Reserva as his favourite sensibly-priced malt of all - so I do intend to get to that quite soon, but this 15yo Solera will do as a starter for 15.
It's a wee 20cl bottle I've got, complete with mini tube, and it only set me back a little over £10, although that was with almost a fiver off.
The whiskies in the bottle are aged in an elaborate mix of woods, spending time in American bourbon, Portuguese sherry and virgin oak. They are then married in Glenfiddich's unique hand-made Oregon pine Solera vat which, if you believe the tube, is "never less than half full".
On a purely superficial note, I've never really liked the triangular bottles Glenfiddich use, though I'm not sure why. Probably says more about me than it does about them. It strikes me as sort of inelegant, in direct contrast to what's inside the bottle.
Anyway, what's it like?
Well, it's a lovely deep, burnished gold in the glass and with no water added the nose is sublime. Honey and lots of that sherry up front with a lovely dry woodiness following it up. Keep sniffing at it though and it just keeps getting better with layers of dried fruit and smoke and oranges.
I noticed last night that adding too much water (I initially added one part water to one part whisky) kills a lot of the more subtle flavours stone dead and renders the whisky a bit flabbier and less punchy. This time it's just the tiniest splash to release some more of the magic.
Not convinced adding water does anything positive at all to the nose, but it certainly softens everything and makes it a lot more delicate and elegant in the mouth.
It's not the heaviest malt to start with but there's a lot more going on than you might expect from what appears at the outset to be such a light whisky. Sherry again, but not over-powering, and more dry wood then lots of raisins and spice and honey sweetness and everything else you get in your granny's Christmas cake. And just like your granny's cake, it's all in perfect balance, nothing drowning out the rest, all the parts working in harmony to produce a lovely little golden symphony of flavours that's hard not to smile at.
And I think that's what this whisky does: it bounces your senses around as it bounces around your mouth, tickling your tastebuds with a dozen glorious flavours - and it makes you smile. And if that's not a good thing, I don't know what is.
A fantastic example of a Speyside malt, the finish is just as sublime with a long fruit-cakey slide into more and more wood that perfumes the breath for two or three minutes if you let it.
I'm now mildly concerned that my journey has peaked too early.
5/5
I was actually more interested in what sort of range a large Tesco stocked - not bad, but not great, if you're interested, and not very helpfully merchandised - so this is truly an impulse purchase. The intention was to taste it properly last night, but a couple of glasses of wine and a World Cup football match later and I wasn't in the right place to be giving it my best tasting shot.
That's not to say I didn't have a couple of glasses - and the word that sticks with me most from sipping away last night is 'elegant'.
But how will it fare today? (And I'm still coming to terms with drinking whisky in the afternoon, even if it is with something approaching reasonable justification.)
So, Glenfiddich. Think it's still the biggest selling brand name in whisky and it claims to be the Most Awarded Whisky In The World on its website. (The website is well worth a nosy if you've got 5 mins, especially the family history bit.) It's certainly one of the first one or two that non-Scots think of when they think whisky.
The distillery remains family owned (by William Grant & Sons), which is strikingly unusual these days, and has been since 1887. Mind you, the family's worth around £1.9bn, according to the latest Sunday Times Rich List, making it the richest family in the world, so the fact that they've never sold it is hardly a surprise.
Tasting notes after a fashion:
Iain Banks, who sort of inspired this blog with his book Raw Spirit, more or less refers to the Glenfiddich 21yo Gran Reserva as his favourite sensibly-priced malt of all - so I do intend to get to that quite soon, but this 15yo Solera will do as a starter for 15.
It's a wee 20cl bottle I've got, complete with mini tube, and it only set me back a little over £10, although that was with almost a fiver off.
The whiskies in the bottle are aged in an elaborate mix of woods, spending time in American bourbon, Portuguese sherry and virgin oak. They are then married in Glenfiddich's unique hand-made Oregon pine Solera vat which, if you believe the tube, is "never less than half full".On a purely superficial note, I've never really liked the triangular bottles Glenfiddich use, though I'm not sure why. Probably says more about me than it does about them. It strikes me as sort of inelegant, in direct contrast to what's inside the bottle.
Anyway, what's it like?
Well, it's a lovely deep, burnished gold in the glass and with no water added the nose is sublime. Honey and lots of that sherry up front with a lovely dry woodiness following it up. Keep sniffing at it though and it just keeps getting better with layers of dried fruit and smoke and oranges.
I noticed last night that adding too much water (I initially added one part water to one part whisky) kills a lot of the more subtle flavours stone dead and renders the whisky a bit flabbier and less punchy. This time it's just the tiniest splash to release some more of the magic.
Not convinced adding water does anything positive at all to the nose, but it certainly softens everything and makes it a lot more delicate and elegant in the mouth.
It's not the heaviest malt to start with but there's a lot more going on than you might expect from what appears at the outset to be such a light whisky. Sherry again, but not over-powering, and more dry wood then lots of raisins and spice and honey sweetness and everything else you get in your granny's Christmas cake. And just like your granny's cake, it's all in perfect balance, nothing drowning out the rest, all the parts working in harmony to produce a lovely little golden symphony of flavours that's hard not to smile at.
And I think that's what this whisky does: it bounces your senses around as it bounces around your mouth, tickling your tastebuds with a dozen glorious flavours - and it makes you smile. And if that's not a good thing, I don't know what is.
A fantastic example of a Speyside malt, the finish is just as sublime with a long fruit-cakey slide into more and more wood that perfumes the breath for two or three minutes if you let it.
I'm now mildly concerned that my journey has peaked too early.
5/5
Comments
Post a Comment