Glen Garioch

Region: Eastern Highlands

Owner: Morrison Bowmore (Suntory)

Founded: 1797

These days, the most used descriptors for Glen Garioch’s spirit tend to be ones such as rich, dense, full, malty and heathery. Peat isn’t a word you would associate with their current spirit, but up until 1995, when the distillery had its own floor malting, the barley would be malted using peat with a specification of 8 to 10PPM. This is why you will often find a light smokiness in the old 15 year old and older independent bottlings, which in the case of the 19 year old bottled by Dewar Rattray in 2012, was full on peat, which was quite a shock.

The old distillery bottled 15 year old was a lovely whisky and I must admit that I was sad to see it go when the range was re-vamped in 2009. I was sad to see that lovely whisky was replaced by a somewhat variable 12 year old, but to be fair the only really disappointing bottlings I’ve tasted have been the sub 10 year old independent bottlings. This has nothing to do with the quality of the spirit; rather it is because Glen Garioch needs time in the cask.

The distillery employs a fairly short, 48- 50 hour fermentation time, to give a cloudy, cereal heavy wort and is distilled in fairly short, stubby, onion shaped stills without any boil balls or apparatus to encourage extensive reflux, even the lyne arms are slightly angled downwards, so the intension is to create a fairly robust, congener heavy new make. This is slightly offset by the use of shell and tube condensers, but even so 12 years seems to be the minimum time it needs to be matured for, but ideally it needs longer.

Their use of Sherry casks, by and large seems to be fairly judicious and balanced and even the no age statement ‘Founders Reserve’ isn’t too bad, considering it contains a reasonable amount of younger spirit. So, a few minor quibbles aside I think it’s certainly a whisky I have no issues with recommending.

(Image Copyright James Mortimer Photography)