Glendronach

Region: Highlands

Owner: Benriach Distillery Company (Brown-Forman)

Founded: 1826

Some commentators claim that Glendronach is a throwback to the Victorian era of robust, traditional whisky production. It has been said that the spirit that flows off their stills is weighty, muscular and distinctly old fashioned, which I can’t argue with, but funnily enough there is never a mention of the words, hard and industrial when describing their spirit.

The reason for this style of spirit is down to the deliberate lack of reflux during the distillation process, although the four stills (two wash and two spirit) feature boil balls they probably have very little influence as, I would imagine the distilling time is relatively short, well it would have to be if you are aiming for a weighty, congener heavy spirit.

Also, like the distilleries that I mentioned above, Glendronach do not release a wholly American oak aged bottling, although they do use American oak casks along with sherry butts. The closest they got to a regular bottling sans sherry was the 8 year old Heilan, which is a vatting of spirit that has been matured in both ex-Bourbon and ex-sherry casks. Here you can just about ascertain the spirit character and that is about as close as you are going to get as the distillery appears not to sell casks at all. In fact as you will see from my tasting notes I have only ever come across three independent bottlings and only one of them was a wholly American oak aged bottling and yes, even at 14 years of age it still showed some sulphurous spirit character, so I hate to think how much sulphur is in their new make!

Now, you might think that as I am not a huge fan of sherry monsters that I will give the distillery a rather low rating, but that is not the case. Of all the distilleries that create sherry monsters, theirs is my go-to malt, if I’m feeling in the mood for that type of whisky. I love the balance of the 12 year old ‘original’, even though it’s aged in a combination of ex-Oloroso and ex-Pedro Ximenez casks, it never seems overblown. Occasionally there is a bit of a cask blemish, but those blemishes do seem few and far between. The 21 year old ‘Parliament’ bottling is generally a lovely, mature sherry monster and there have been a few other releases that I have enjoyed over the year. The only bottling that I’ve never warmed to is the 15 year old ‘Revival’ , but I often find this with middle aged sherry monsters.

(Image Copyright James Mortimer Photography)