After over week long battle with the flu I’m back to my old reviewing ways. The first one after my recovery just so happens to be the first of round 5 of our Scottish Distillery Tour. Stop number 64 is Glen Spey. This Speyside distillery is Diageo owned and produces precious few official bottlings. The vast majority of their production goes into J&B Rare blends. This single malt comes from the independent bottlers at Berry Brothers & Rudd. 12 years old, distilled in 2000, bottled in 2013 from cask number 265, which I assume means it is single cask. Bottled at 46% ABV and is non chill filtered and natural color of a very pale straw. Wow, this is a very peculiar nose. To the eye this may be straw colored, but the nose is green, green, green. Green oak and wood resin/sap. Grassy and very herbal with oregano and basil. It’s also quite vegetal. Cooked celery and water chestnuts. Almonds, marzipan with a faint honey note. A fleeting sweetness like old raisins and faint apricots. Earthy, like root vegetables that were just pulled from the garden and you haven’t even washed them off yet. A very unique nose. Not entirely pleasant, but unlike anything I’ve ever had before. I added a drop or two of water and it brought out a weak ginger and lemon oil, but mostly amplified the vegetal notes. The palate very much echoes the nose. Vegetal, celery and water chestnuts with a touch of fennel. Green oak and a dash of honey. Green grass, earthy with a dusting of pepper. A far away sweetness that never really materializes due to the overwhelming vegetal notes. A sort of mineral note as well. A light to medium bodied mouthfeel. Mouthwatering at first but turns a little dry with a fizzy or fuzzy feel to it. Almost as if it’s very lightly carbonated. Strange. The finish is short and long at the same time. In the short I got almonds, grass, herbs and a light mint. The vegetal and mineral notes and green oak seem to go on forever, and that’s not really a good thing. Not at all what I was expecting from a Speysider. Such odd notes and a strange profile. I don’t really know if this is indicative of the distillery character or if this is just a bad cask choice (or both). Perhaps they should have skipped cask 265 and gone with 266. Another miss from an independent bottler. At $70 this is an even bigger miss. Not that I would really have the opportunity, but I would absolutely not buy another bottle. 2.5 Cheers