There’s a blog I read where the writers are always moaning about the secondary market and bottle flipping. It’s a fair point to make once or twice (and it’s a good blog otherwise) but they bang on about it so much that they’re in danger of becoming the bar bores. More importantly, they’re wrong. There’s enough good whisky to go around that I think the harm from flipping is overstated, and if some people want to collect bottles rather than open them, they’re entitled to that enjoyment. My friend has some original Star Wars toys still in their packaging and nobody accusses him of spoiling his children’s fun. Personally, I’ve never had trouble finding the bottles I want, even the limited releases. It just takes work, some Internet smarts and fast fingers. And if some people want to spend silly sums on Pappy, then I say Iet’s separate that fool from his money. The occasional sample at a whisky show is sufficient for me. But my real point in defending the secondary market is that I’m satisfied it does more good than harm. Case in point, the whisky I’m writing about here, a bottle that I bought from someone who had bought it an auction and which I then split with several others at cost. Were it not for the secondary market (or more accurately in this case, the tertiary), I would never have even thought to have tried this whisky, let alone had the opportunity to buy it. But thanks to the two or more bottle flippers who enabled this transaction, my co-purchasers and I have now gained a more nuanced understanding and appreciation of Glendronach and learned a bit more about the characteristics of an extended PX sherry maturation. Everybody wins, including the distillery. The bottle in question isn’t the exact one listed, but it’s close enough to not warrant a separate entry. Cask 3804 was also distilled in 1995 and matured for 19 years in a PX sherry puncheon. It yielded 694 bottles of 54.2% juice that were sold exclusively under the Whiskybase.com banner. It pours a deep rosewood color and exudes aromas of peanut skins, orange oil, pencil shavings and maple syrup, with a hint of vapor rub. There’s marmalade and caramel on the palate, plus a dash of marzipan, but the flavors are tight and hard to separate. The finish is long, oily and sweet. It goes down easy without water, but is none the worse for it. Overall, it’s a fine example of a long sherry maturation, though the palate was a little on the rich side for me and I didn’t feel the need for more than the 5oz I kept from the split. But if this sounds like your kind of thing, the good news is that there’s probably going to be another bottle or one like it popping up for auction eventually. And that’s something to be thankful for.