Glenfarclas Distillery post-tour tasting, 3rd May 2024, whisky# 4 Nose: Malt extract, rum and raisin chocolate, cherries, orange peel, preserved ginger, dried apricot and leather. It’s a marvelous, commanding nose that has intensity but is well balanced. An excellent sherry nose. Palate: The arrival is sweetly spicy with preserved fruits stewed in dark honey, pippali, hot cinnamon and nutmeg. In the development the palate becomes maltier with licorice, oak and espresso coffee backed by a leathery, tobacco note. The texture is very good, just a little oily with perfectly contained alcohol. Adding water tones down the spice notes a little, enlarges the sweet flavours (but also introduces a touch of bitterness) and makes the texture creamier. Finish: Long. Mildly spicy and sweet with a candy-like fruity acidity in the aftertaste. This distillery exclusive bottling was released for the Spirit of Speyside Festival in 2023, but bottles are still available from the distillery door (the 2024 Festival exclusive was a NAS called “107” but I did not have an opportunity to taste it). It was distilled in 2002, matured in a 1st-fill sherry butt (distillery cask 3774) for 20 years, and bottled on the 15th February 2023. 636 bottles were filled at cask-strength of 54.3%. A very fine example of classic, old-school 1st-fill sherry Glenfarclas. The nose is quite magnificent and the palate not far short in quality. This is good sherried whisky, but not a generic sherry bomb. I did note a slight astringency when it was watered but this just provided balance against the spicy-sweetness of the neat palate. “Excellent” : 88/100 (4.5 stars)