1901
Glenfarclas 12 Year
Single Malt — Highlands, Scotland
Reviewed
October 10, 2020 (edited November 21, 2020)
Nose: light, fruity smoke, lemon, raisins, raspberry
Palate: sherry, dry, raspberry, old wood, honey
Finish: light tannic finish and not very dry
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Last 16, Match 7:
Glenfarclas 12yo versus Glengoyne 12yo
Last year I tasted the 15yo expression and I was not bowled over. Indeed, even though I know this is a Glenfarclas signature I was somewhat put off by the “over-sherried” nature of it. Sacrilege! I may now become a target for factions of fervent sherry bombers and so will have to check under my car each morning for unexploded bottles of Aberlour A’Bunadh. But I recognise my own (current) preferences at this stage to know that I generally lean away from strong, sherried whiskies. Maybe due to its lower age this worked well enough for me. Enough to beat out the competition of a sherry-finished malt in Glengoyne 12.
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Qtr Final, Match 4:
Glenfarclas 12yo versus Speyburn 10yo
Got a nice whiff of old furniture and marmalade this time round in a battle with Speyburn 10. The taste is rich, sweet sherry with some interesting heat and salty sharpness and a yummy oak and sweet tea finish. The Speyburn is a fine, light scotch and in the last round it bested a sherried dram. Not this time. This struck a chord tonight, despite what I said above about sherried whiskies. I never said I wasn’t fickle and capricious. Stop judging me!
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The intolerable torment of a whiskyphile. I have too large a backlog of samples and miniatures to go through. Selecting a dram can be confusing – like Lloyd and Harry’s budgie I can barely keep my head together. So, I have picked sixteen scotch whiskies that are 12yrs or younger or NAS to battle it out in a Scotch Deathmatch. It’s my incentive to lighten the logjam. Follow along if you care (and really why should you?). Oh the drama!
https://challonge.com/ScotchMadness
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Qtr Final, Match 4: Glenfarclas 12yo versus Speyburn 10yo Got a nice whiff of old furniture and marmalade this time round in a battle with Speyburn 10. The taste is rich, sweet sherry with some interesting heat and salty sharpness and a yummy oak and sweet tea finish. The Speyburn is a fine, light scotch and in the last round it bested a sherried dram. Not this time. This struck a chord tonight, despite what I said above about sherried whiskies. I never said I wasn’t fickle and capricious. Stop judging me!
@Slainte-Mhath I’ll be very interested to read your review of the 12. The perceived drop in quality may just be a sequence of dud batches over a short time. They are very batch-variable and their wood-management regime is, let's say "cavalier" (or maybe we can be kind and call it "traditional" 😋) For me it's still worth putting up with the odd "meh" bottle for the sake of the excellent ones. I can’t be bothered chasing after old bottles myself but it would be interesting to taste a 12 year old from the 1980s.
@1901 I'm disappointed that the Glengoyne didn't do better since it always seems priced a bit above Glenfarclas.
@Slainte-Mhath I'm looking forward to reading your re-review :) I finally tasted this several months back and it was a huge disappointment. I might have been a tad harsh on it, but it would be interesting to know if part of why I rated it so far below most other people is a decrease in quality
@cascode That's a very good point about Farclas, especially the younger expressions. Glenfarclas has some of the strongest, most characterful distillate out there, so it takes a lot to cover it up. It does get to be more like a sherry bomb at the older age statements, but the distillate still shows through pretty well.
@Slainte-Mhath I’d be interested as always to get your view on that. Though good, I don’t think I’ll be purchasing or returning to it soon.
@cascode that’s an interesting take on the sherry bombedness of Glenfarclas. I haven’t had Tamdhu, Glenrothes or Aberlour yet so I don’t really have that good reference.
@1901 I am doing a re-review of Glenfarclas 12 later this month... rumour has it that the quality deteriorated over the years.
@cascode Yes you are. It helps that the explanation also makes sense
@CKarmios Hah, out of curiosity I looked at my last review of the 105, and found this statement "105 is a very bold, hugely flavourful whisky but it’s not what I’d call a sherry-bomb. Those hefty Glenfarclas baked and boiled fruit tones from the direct fired stills are more than a match for any mere fortified wine." Well, at least I'm consistent 😄
@CKarmios No, not really. That might sound counter-intuitive when considering such a heavily sherried and intense whisky, but I tend to associate the term sherry-bomb with a narrow and bombastic profile, and so usually only apply it to whiskies that are so swamped by sherry that they display little else. However Glenfarclas 105 (like all Glenfarclas) has a distillate that is huge, complex and more than a match for any sherry cask. I always find great depth in their whisky, even in the young expressions. It's probably an idiosyncratic perspective.
@cascode would you call the 105 a sherry bomb?
@1901 I've never thought of Glenfarclas as a "sherry-bomb". There's certainly always lots of sherry present in everything they issue, but it's never "winey" or "grapey" like, say Aberlour, Glenrothes or Tamdhu. Macallan pulls off the same trick when it's good, but that is an increasingly rare occurrance.