One Quick Dram: SMWS 1.156 Glenfarclas 11 Years Old Whisky Tasting Notes

Wanna have some fun?

Give a blind dram of this whisky to a whisky aficionado and ask him or her to identify it. It will be a barrel of laughs. They’d get to Speyside, but that’s as far as it will go.  I wonder if anybody who’s last name isn’t Grant would identify it on a sniff….

This is a Glenfarclas single ex-bourbon barrel Richard Barr brought to a cask strength themed bottle share night at our Malt Mongers club meeting in Tel Aviv. Before this bottle we tasted the Glengoyne Cask Strength, which will get its own whisky tasting note on the blog.

June 2014 Malt Mongers Cask Strength Tasting

It’s not that Glenfarclas doesn’t use ex-bourbon casks, it’s just that the core expressions all have significant sherry matured liquid influence. To the best of my recollection, I heard from Robert Ransom that the 10 year old is one third sherry cask matured, and that’s the lowest sherry matured content in the whole line. If any of you have more detailed information, I’d appreciate your sharing it with me.

Getting to this Dram, it’s titled “New York Cheesecake”. I humbly admit that I didn’t get cheesecake on this one, but I got a whole lot of other good things from the dram. Heck, I even had seconds 🙂

Scotch Malt Whisky Society 1.156 Glenfarclas 11 Years Old Single Ex-Bourbon Cask (63.2% ABV, NC, NCF)

Color: Light straw, slow legs.

Nose: Vanilla, coconut, honey, mixed nuts, red berry sauce you get on ice cream, malt, open fields on a spring day and bittersweet chocolate. After the addition of water: Sweet Lemon (like lemonade),pickled lemon and whiffs of the cotton candy spinning machine from afar….

Palate: Very smooth, dry feeling and mouth coating –  not in an oily way. Bitter almonds and green apples are dominant with notes of citrus.

Linger: Long Linger is slightly bitter and lemony, with notes of sweet chocolate, some light black pepper and green apple.