No partnership, joint venture, agency, or employment relationship is created as a result of your use of the Service. I have been saving this tiny little sample bottle. What better time than the week before Christmas – before everything gets crazy? GlenDronach is among my favorite distilleries, and may make my favorite sherried malt (for the price). The 18 was a mixed bag for me, but it is not every day that I get to taste a malt with over 20 years of maturation, let alone an official bottling. Nothing in the Terms shall exclude or limit our liability for fraudulent misrepresentation or for death or personal injury resulting from gross negligence or willful misconduct by us.

Entering the discussion, I couldn’t help but focus on my preconceptions about what this new chill-filtration process entailed. My pre-emptive questions were about why the decision had been made to filter the liquid, who had made that decision, what Brown-Forman was trying to achieve by incorporating such a drastic step, how much it even cost to run one of these machines, and what the impact on the liquid itself would be– a liquid that had built its reputation on natural presentation and incredible taste. A sip revealed an oily texture and a subtle character. There is no doubt it’s a Sherried whisky, and it has body to be sure, but it’s certainly no Sherry bomb. Once again, you need to step into this dance, because it’s not jumping out at you. It’s full of earthy, slightly bitter cocoa; dried cherries and figs; a little toffee; and a sliver of green oak. The finish opens with cake spices, but then turns curiously ashy, lingering on that note as it fades away. Nose: Burnt toffee, figs, dark chocolate, plums, maraschino cherries, raisins and honey glazed ham with rum notes of molasses and Demerara sugar. Also a big note of Pedro Ximinez sherry with some savoury notes of ash (as in ashes) and cedar wood along with a hint of parsley. With water more Demerara sugar and ham are more pronounced along with regular toffee (not burnt) some leather and a hint of toast. Nevertheless, the presentation of a whisky surely gives us an insight into the attitude and mindset of a producer when bottling an expression (be it a special release or a core range product). The distiller and blender are saying to us, “This is the best product we can deliver. This is our spirit, and we are proud.” With more and more new distilleries releasing inaugural bottlings and beginning to distribute their core range, we are seeing these three requirements met from almost all of them. They aren’t produced for blends: they are setting up their stall and proudly displaying their liquid in as natural a form as they can. A syndicate headed by James Allardes founded the GlenDronach distillery in 1826. The distillery opened and closed various times and at one time or another, was owned by many of the well-known players in the market including Chivas, the Grant Family and Teachers and Sons.

All whisky is filtered to a certain extent, with barrier-filtered whiskies often making their way into cask-strength bottlings. Not all chill-filtered whiskies are subject to the huge industrial and forceful filtration technique we associate with the blends and mass-market malts we all know. The definition of chill-filtration, in my opinion, potentially needs to be re-assessed as our knowledge of whisky grows and the whisky-making process is refined and altered as time goes on. Unless mandatory applicable law provides otherwise, your use of and membership to the Service are exclusively governed by Dutch law. We shall first try to settle any dispute over a dram of whisky. Disputes that cannot be settled over multiple drams of whisky shall be solely submitted to the court of Amsterdam, The Netherlands unless mandatory applicable law provides otherwise.

Pallet: muscular and dense, coffee Christmas cake, crystallised ginger rum again with ham, pepper coffee some wood and gentle herbal influence. With water regular ginger more mocha/coffee and ham.

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Whiskybase B.V. is the Dutch private limited liability company, having its statutory seat in Rotterdam, The Netherlands and its office at Zwaanshals 530, 3035 KS Rotterdam, The Netherlands. Whiskybase B.V. is registered with the Dutch Chamber of Commerce under no. 52072819. Nose (22/25): Very strong sherry. Dark chocolate. Cocoa beans. Dark rum. Nuts. Almonds. Walnuts. Spicy oaks. Let it air and it settles down nicely. Becomes more crisp. More sweeter. More brown sugar. Muscovado sugar. There's a hint of sourness. Cold cuts. Dark jam. Honey. Toast. Quite a typical Oloroso nose with some complexity thrown in thanks to the PX. Like all the GlenDronach expressions the whisky has an oily, viscous character with a pronounced palate weight. It won’t be long now before the GlenDronach 21 Years Parliament will be made from whisky that was distilled after GlenDronach reopened in the early 2000s. It means that the release I’m reviewing today will be at least 25 years old, maybe even 26 years, since it was bottled in 2021. After all, the distillery was closed between 1996 and 2002, and that gap of six years forces GlenDronach to use older whisky than necessary. Regardless of whether the Service offers the functionality to contribute, you are solely responsible and liable for any content and information that you create, upload, post, publish, link to, duplicate, transmit, record, display or otherwise make available on the Service or to other Members, such as chat messages, text messages, videos, audio, audio recordings, music, pictures, photographs, text and any other information or materials, whether publicly posted or privately transmitted (“Contributions”).