GLENFARCLAS SINGLE MALT
Single Cask #HL18977, distilled December 1989, bottled January 2022MASH BILL – 100% malted barley
PROOF – 91.6
AGE – 32 years 1 month
DISTILLERY – Hunter Laing (sourcing from Glenfarclas)
PRICE – $174
WORTH BUYING? – No, sadly
I picked this up in 2022 when it was released, and held onto it in anticipation of my partner and my thirty-second anniversary in 2024. I’ve occasionally come across deals on older scotch whiskies that I’ve held in reserve for her birthday or mine. She’s not nearly the whisky fan I am. But she has a great fondness for Scotland. (She’s got a great nose for whisky too, fyi.) And so when she does enjoy a neat pour, that country’s native drink is welcomed.
Holding a bottle in reserve for a special occasion, of course, puts an extra pressure on it to be extra special. This post’s bottle may have been deemed “Speyside’s Finest”—a code name meant to hint at that classic Speyside distillery, Glenfarclas—but winks like this are marketing. Would the whisky itself be especially fine?
On the night we cracked open the bottle to toast our thirty-two years, I didn’t find this whisky to be especially fine. I kept that to myself, of course. We weren’t in formal tasting mode. More important was our shared moment and enjoying our evening. And anyway, my partner liked it, so that night I liked it too. But quietly to myself, my inner whisky fan voice muttered darn.
I know better than to draw conclusions from the first pour of a bottle, or my first sip on a given day. I let the bottle sit a week or so. On subsequent tries I did enjoy it more. Its honeyed fruitiness seemed to have amplified, taking the sharp edge off a bitter malt/metal note that had irked me at uncorking. Yet still I didn’t find this to be the finest example of Glenfarclas or any other Speysider. So I let it sit a while longer…
Now here we are, just over four months since uncorking and nearing the bottle’s final pours. These brief notes were taken using a traditional Glencairn.
COLOR – pale and dusty honey yellows allowing the whole world to enter the glass
NOSE – lemon, honey, salt, malt, cream custard, vanilla, dry beach wood, dry beach sand
TASTE – candy notes lean forward immediately, adding sweet caramel to the honey, custard and vanilla, with the elemental notes now backing these up
FINISH – gently warming in the throat, leaving only faint whiffs of the taste’s notes, and a sense of the bitter notes gnawing at remnants of the sweet notes
OVERALL – an uneventful but inoffensive single malt
Well, it’s fine. I will say that I’ve put it toward some Cameron’s Kick cocktails (scotch whisky, Irish whiskey, lemon juice, orgeat) and it’s added nicely. But on its own there’s something neither here nor there about it. Not too sweet. Not too bitter. Not great. Not awful. There’s something generic and even slightly rough about it, how in the finish the bitter aspects chafe at the familiar sweet notes.
Glenfarclas might be considered by some to indeed be Speyside’s finest. But I still wouldn’t say this single cask is Glenfarclas at its finest.
All that said, here are some notes from my partner, who approaches whisky like a regular person and not like the geek I am. I didn’t share with her my impressions. Let’s see what she gets from it:
COLOR – a vintage 1970s sunset; My grandma lived on the ocean in San Diego and it reminds me of sunsets there
NOSE – a soft and warm raisin pastry, breezy and fresh like crisp and salty ocean air, a hint of milk chocolate
TASTE – inviting, seeps into my palate at a warm and even pace, hugs my tongue, easy lemon that’s not too tart, salt
FINISH – bouncy and dry, mild but lingering, with the lemon and salt, a bit of apple
OVERALL – very nice, refreshing, breezy, with a bit of a hug like wearing a sweater on a sunny beach in autumn
Interesting that her experience was less flavor and aroma oriented and more about texture and setting. But everything she noted made perfect sense to me. She likes it more than I do, which is fine. Great even. The bottle’s almost done at this point, and I know she’ll enjoy the bulk of what remains.
Of course one always hopes a bottle marked for a special occasion will be amazing. But as with life and relationships, so too with whisky are there no guarantees. We take what comes, respond, and get on with it. This isn’t the first whisky I’ve attempted to pair with my partner and my anniversary. And I take some comfort knowing that, so far, no whisky has been equal to, much less better than, our many years together. We’ve done pretty well. 😉
Cheers!
The Right Spirit 