Luxury spirits (and some cheaper bottles too)
Bougie bottles, custom casks - it's all getting a bit spenny
Welcome to The Glass, an irregular boozeletter for drinks to tell your friends about. Read on for news of:
Some very fancy drams 🏴🥃
Top-level barrel bothering from the Dominican Republic 🇩🇴🥃
Tasting notes and links to buy for 8 different spirits
A look at some Very Fancy Drams
Have you noticed a lot of Scotch whisky distilleries seem to be turning 200? It’s no coincidence. It’s down to a law introduced in 1823 that allowed illicit distillers in their highland bothies to stop dodging taxmen and turn legit.
The Glenlivet was the first to take The Man up on this offer1, though its founder, George Smith, needed a little while to be won over, hence the 200th anniversary celebrations having to wait until this year.
To mark its big birthday, The Glenlivet threw a lavish dinner set among the stills, right in the heart of the distillery itself. It’s no fun reading about a party you weren’t at, so I won’t go on about it. Suffice to say I was there and yes, it was amazing.
The distillery also released its first luxury dram, a 55 year old single malt aged in a specially constructed and custom seasoned sherry cask. This is the oldest whisky The Glenlivet has ever released, and probably the most expensive too.
Why do distilleries do this?
It’s not just a cash-grab. I mean, it is partly a cash-grab, sure. They are literally in it for the money, after all. There are 100 bottles, and I expect they’ll manage to sell them all. Plus there will be more releases in this series — one a year until 2029 is the current plan. So yes, the money matters.
There’s also brand positioning. The Glenlivet is the biggest-selling single malt in the USA, but until now it has lacked the super-high-end releases that its rivals — The Macallan, for instance — have been banging out for a while. So you could have argued that maybe it was slipping behind. Or the others were pulling away. Same thing. With this new release, The Glenlivet has put itself up there among them. Reputation maintained.
High-end releases also boost sales further down the range. Unless I go mad and sell my house, I can’t afford this bottle. I suspect most of you, dear readers, are in the same boat. (But if I’m wrong about that, let’s talk.) Whisky is a crowded, over-supplied market in which distilleries fight for our attention and our money — all while exports are falling (down 18% in the first half of this year compared to last). Bottles like this get our attention. And if you can’t afford this bottle, perhaps you’ll decide it’s been a while since you had anything from The Glenlivet and take a look at some of their other bottles instead.
To wit:
The Glenlivet tasting notes
The Glenlivet Founders Reserve. The entry-level, non-age-statement bottle. Aromas of vanilla fudge, peach and satsuma. Banana, floral notes, honey, toffee. With water it is creamier, has a nutty background note, and finishes with a touch of pepper and cinnamon. £25 from Master of Malt.
The Glenlivet 12 Year Old. Smooth and fruity. Tropical banana, orange and pear; cereal and popcorn on the palate. It has less spice on the finish than the Founders Reserve. £40 from Whisky Exchange.
The Glenlivet 18 Year Old. Deeper fruit notes of peaches and poached pear. There’s honeysuckle then vanilla, toffee, fudge, clove, nutmeg. It’s rich and a little oily with a smooth finish. Lovely, and perhaps the best value bottle in their core range, especially compared to other 18 year old single malts. £100 from Spirits Kiosk.
The Glenlivet 21 Year Old. Oh, this is a treat! Very rich, with big sherry notes plus a bit of cereal. The fruity side is subdued but still present. It’s nutty, chocolatey, and has a long finish. It matures in three types of cask. From oloroso casks it gets dried fruit and cinnamon. From port casks, dark chocolate and pears. From cognac casks, berry, toasted oak and spice. £240 from Whisky Exchange.
The Glenlivet 55 Year Old. Included here for the curious or the very rich. Aromas of poached pears, orange and dates. Toasted hazelnut, dark chocolate, cinnamon and nutmeg. I also got big rancio notes of leaf litter and tobacco. On the palate there’s blackcurrant jam, vanilla fudge and dark chocolate, zesty orange and crystallised ginger, and a spiced clove finish. RRP €50,000. Have your people contact Peter Prentice, Global VIP Relationship Director.
But wait there’s more
Even more fancy drams. I’ll be brief.
The Macallan has released its latest Harmony Collection bottles in collaboration with the Cirque du Soleil. Yes, you read that right. Harmony Collection Vibrant Oak (available in domestic retail) has been matured in a combination of first fill American and second fill sherry seasoned oak casks. Harmony Collection Guardian Oak (available in global travel retail exclusively) has been matured in a combination of first fill sherry seasoned European oak casks and refill sherry oak casks. More info here.
More Macallan. More expensive. Another 200th anniversary, marked with the TIME:SPACE Collection. There’s a 1940 vintage 84 year old that comes double-packaged with a 2018 vintage 5 year old. I couldn’t even see a price listed, which means it’s holy-shitballs-expensive. More info here.
The Glenfiddich has released its Grand Chateau 31 Year Old, a “testament to the artistry and dedication of its makers” which you can buy from Harvey Nichols and other luxury whisky retailers in the UK for £1,595. There’s also a graffiti themed take-over at Harvey Nicks until 13 October. I don’t have a link for this one. Soz.
Playing with fire
Earlier this week Brugal released the second rum in its Colección Visionaria series. The first was flavoured with cacao. This new one takes its cues from coffee.
For my money, Brugal is doing some of the most interesting things with cask maturation right now. They are the Best Barrel Botherers, you might say.
This is not surprising when you consider the distillery makes a very highly distilled spirit, meaning almost all of its rums' character and flavour comes from how they are matured.
The cool thing is Brugal doesn’t simply select a sherry butt here or a port pipe there and leave it at that. No, it manipulates its barrels to create something unique.
It has developed a technique it calls ‘dark aromatic toasting’ which I wrote about recently for Club Oenologique. Basically the distillers empty a rum cask part-way through its maturation and, while it’s still wet, heat it over an open flame. This draws out and caramelises sugars from both the wood and the rum. Then they fill it again, mixing all those sugars into the spirit, and leave the maturation to run its course.
For the Colección Visionaria, the distillers toast the casks (before they fill them this time) to infuse the wood with flavours of other ingredients. What’s more, they do this without those ingredients ever actually touching the wood. Instead they lower them into the fire in a braséro — a sort of metal basket. The aromatic oils from the cacao or the coffee are vaporised by the heat and infuse into the inner surface of the cask as it toasts over the flames, from where it eventually works itself into the rum.
It reminds me of mezcal distillers using pechuga to add a savoury note to their spirit. But that’s another story.
There’s more to come in this series but when I asked Jassil, the Maestra Ranera, what flavours were next she was very tight-lipped.
Brugal tasting notes
Maestro Reserva. Sweetness in the ascendency. Bags of vanilla, honeysuckle, popcorn and caramel. On the palate (viscous, a little oily) you’ll find crême brulée, black pepper, fermented pineapple, dark toffee and guava. 41.2% ABV. £150 from Master of Malt.
Colección Visionaria 01. Grassy banana and pineapple esters mellow to caramel, raisin and orange peel, with cacao coming through on the finish. This one starts off quite punchy but mellows with time in the glass, so let it breathe. 45% ABV. £75 from Whisky Exchange
Colección Visionaria 02. Dark red berries, coffee and chocolate, with a hint of green pepper and overripe pineapple. A silky texture with smooth caramel and Arabica coffee on the palate. It finishes with dried fruits, spice and more coffee. I also got a little Crema Catalana thing going on with hints of crystallised mint leaf. 45% ABV. £72 from Berry Bros. & Rudd.
At least that is how the brand likes to paint things. It’s probably more accurate to say The Glenlivet Distillery was the first licensed distillery in the Glenlivet valley.