Glenfarclas 17 Year

I recently did a tasting vertical of Glenfarclas 12, 15, 17, 21 and 25 along with the 105 NAS. I have full bottles of the 12, 17 and 105 NAS and got a sample set of the others to see what I was missing. My feeling is that I was not missing much. It seems like GF peaks at around 17-18 years with their production offerings. The 15 year old at 46% is really good and the extra abv helps. I suspect that any really good older barrels are being sold as single cask offerings. This 17-year old release really seems like the sweet spot of the whole GF production expressions in terms of price to quality. The nose is your typical strong sherried, dark fruits and spice The palate is carmel and plums. The lower abv hurts it here. Although it is fairly rich, it lacks the thickness and power of a higher abv offering. IMHO, it's not as good as the Balvenie 15-year sherry at 47.8% for example. Finish is typical baking spices, maybe some citrus and dark orange chocolate flavor. I have not had any of the Glenfarclas family selections or single casks but reading the reviews it seems like those are where all the high quality barrels are going and the regular expressions are where they use the rest of the distillate. This is a very cask-driven whisky. The flavor is consistent across all of the expressions but it is very much a low abv sherry flavor and not that much different from other low abv sherry expressions. I would have a hard time telling this apart from the 16-year-old Aberlour for example. It is kind of a generic cask-driven sherry scotch style. If you love that style, you will like this.

Wonderful mid value option,

Fantastic notes of chocolate, definitely caramel, and plenty of smooth toffee. Not sure I can tell the difference between the 17 and 18 but this is a wonderful pour that I’ll be sure to add to my collection.

The nose starts with a light sherry and orange effervescent mixture, then lychee fruit, vanilla cupcake before spices of ginger, cinnamon and leather with no ethanol bite. The taste starts with a light to medium mouthfeel starting with that light sherry and orange effervescent mixture then lychee fruit before spices of ginger, cloves, mild chili pepper spice, and grapefruit pith with light ethanol burn that finishes short with grapefruit pith, lychee fruit and gingersnap cookies. This is an easy sipper with a mix of light sherry, citrus fruits, sweets and light spices with an enjoyable nose and taste, but the mid palate veers towards over steeped fruit water creating a very bitter finish. That bitterness of the grapefruit pith throws the balance of the dram off, overpowering the other flavors that I would have liked to taste more of and bringing this from a 4 to a 3 for me. I’m happy I was able to try this thanks to @ctbeck11, but a sample is more than enough for me.

Earthy, caramel, berry.

Nose: Candied fruit and orange peels, slightly leathery. Palate: Initial burst of butterscotch followed by a bitter orange peel taste that takes over mid to late palate and dominates the waxy medium length finish. Not as complex, nor as sweet as I anticipated. Still it's a very nice scotch overall, however the orange peel flavour is quite intense and may be a bit off putting for some. Just wish it came with the same 46% abv as the 15 year old (which I think I prefer).