The GlenDronach Parliament Aged 21 Years Single Malt Scotch Whisky, 70 cl

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On the palate, there are dried fruit notes of golden raisin and cooked fig, orange zest, and walnut along with some milk chocolate, coffee and a bit of toasted oak. The whisky shows the classic sherry matured “Christmas cake” profile as well as spice notes of cinnamon and nutmeg. 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.

This cookie is set by Rubicon Project to control synchronization of user identification and exchange of user data between various ad services. The company has a long history of producing sherried malts, maturing its whiskies either in Oloroso sherry butts or in a combination of Oloroso and Pedro Ximénez (PX) casks.

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Glendronach distillery does incorporate a level of filtration. When the casks are vatted and brought together–either under Dr. Rachel Barrie or, previously, Billy Walker – every batch is going to contain some level of flocculation and, indeed, of turbidity. That vatted liquid is then sent down to the bottling line for further inspection by the quality control team, where it is then compared to a base sample of the 12 Year Old. (I’m using the 12-year-old expression as my example for this piece, although the same process is carried out by the team regardless of expression.) If the newly vatted liquid is deemed to have a ‘higher’ level of turbidity than the base sample, it is subjected to filtration. Like its siblings, this is an oily, viscous whisky with a pronounced palate weight, although it is a little drier than the 12 YO and 15 YO expressions. The GlenDronach distillery lies at the Dronach Burn in the Deveron area. The whisky distillery was founded in 1826, by a syndicate headed by James Allardes. Thanks to the fifth Duke of Gordon, distillation throughout the highlands was legalized in the early 19th century. It is said the duke encouraged the group to build GlenDronach. The distillery changed hands in 1852, to Walter Scott of Teaninich. Following his death, a group from Leith acquired the distillery.

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The whisky has the characteristic viscosity and palate weight of a sherried whisky. That characteristic seems more pronounced in the older GlenDronach expressions.

GlenDronach is known for long maturation periods in sherry casks. The GlenDronach 21 yo is no exception as it was aged in a combination of Spanish Pedro Ximénez and Oloroso casks from Andalucía. The core collection includes a 12 yo, 15 yo, 18 yo, and even a peated expression. Last year, the GlenDronach 18 yo whisky was one of the best drams I tried during the year. It will be interesting to see if how the additional time in the sherry casks matures the whisky.Whiskybase B.V. (“Whiskybase”, “we” or “us”, company details below) offers a whisky enthusiasts online platform that provides its members access to the most comprehensive, transparent and trusted resource of whisky bottles and allows and stimulates its members to contribute information about whisky bottles to the platform (“Service”). Don’t think anyone is going to fight me on this, but Glendronach is one of the best distilleries out there at the moment. The miracles in cask selection the people of Billy Walker performed after the take-over in 2009. So much that the 15yo revival in no time, became an all-time favorite with the whisky crowd. So what about one of its older brothers: next to the 18yo the official range offers a 21yo expression, called Parliament.