Glenfarclas Distillery
The buildings that house the Glenfarclas Distillery date from 1790 but it was 1844 before a license to distil was granted to farmer, David Hay. Upon his death, Hay’s property was sold to his neighbour, John Grant, for £512. Six generations later, the distillery remains under the ownership of the same family.
Such continuity of ownership has been of huge benefit to Glenfarclas and its single malt. During the industry downturn of the 1980s, rival businesses were winding down and mothballing distilleries. The Grants of Glenfarclas, however, kept their stills running, and when the market picked up again, their warehouses were well stocked with a supply of aged malt that few could match.
In 1973, Glenfarclas became one of the first distilleries to create an on-site visitor centre. The design included a designated tasting room known as The Ship Room, with walls decked in wood panelling that was recovered from the RMS Empress of Australia, a ship that brought troops home from India, ending two centuries of British rule.
The Glenfarclas malt is matured in ex-oloroso European oak casks, sourced from the Miguel Martin Cooperage in Jerez. The 105 expression, first released in 1968, is an early pioneer and forerunner of the trend towards cask strength bottlings. It is bottled at 60% abv and can be bought for the very reasonable sum of £50.
Smell: Sherry, caramel, honey, apple and pear, vanilla. Some lemon scent and a wee bit of cask char. Almost a wee suggestion of smoke at the very back.
Taste: Big flavours on show here. Lots of sherry with dried fruits, salted caramel and brown sugar with runny honey, cinnamon and nutmeg.
Thoughts: Glenfarclas is a distillery that has long been at the top of its game. No-one else has achieved such consistency and affordability with sherry matured whisky and their reasonable pricing is something that isn’t praised enough for my liking.
The whisky industry is obsessed with words like premium and luxury and it seems like 90% of press coverage focuses on new, supposedly-collectible bottlings – or new records being set at auction. In reality, of course, those products are available to an extremely small group of people. Personally, I prefer to see more of a focus on whisky that people can actually afford to drink. Call me old-fashioned but I prefer sipping on a dram, rather than looking at one.
Speaking of which, the 105 offers just about everything I want from a whisky. It’s got depth and layer upon layer of dried fruit flavours and even at a whopping 60%, it doesn’t need a lot of water to open up. Cask strength and sherry maturation are two things that are often used as justification for higher pricing but thankfully, Glenfarclas don’t follow those trends.
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