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KWM 2020 Whisky Calendar Day 11: Glen Scotia 15 Year Old

Posted on December 12, 2021

by Evan

What could possibly follow the beastly peat of Laphroaig we had on Day Ten? Open up the door and see - we are heading to Campbeltown! Door Eleven gives us the Glen Scotia 15-Year-Old.

This is at least the third KWM Whisky Calendar to feature a Glen Scotia. We featured the excellent Glen Scotia Victoriana in our 2019 Calendar. A year or two before that we had a G&M Glen Scotia.

As I have said half in jest at a few Scotch Malt Whisky Society Tastings previously: Glen Scotia is easily one of the top three operating distilleries in Campbeltown. When it comes to The Wee Toon, it is typically Springbank Distillery that gets all of the love from whisky aficionados. It is easy to see why - Springbank is a grungy Victorian throwback in look and feel. It is an anachronism - a distillery out of time and out of step with modern life - just as some say Campbeltown itself is. Springbank is rustic, dilapidated, inconsistent, and often impossible to find bottles from nowadays. And it is all the more loved because of that.

It can be easy to forget that Campbeltown is home to three operating distilleries. Besides Springbank, there is also Glengyle, which is bottled as Kilkerran. This distillery almost shouldn't count, though I love it dearly just as I love Springbank itself.

Both Glengyle and Springbank are owned and operated by W.M. Cadenhead. But together they essentially amount to one operating distillery, because they share important resources such as employees and the Springbank Floor Maltings. This means that if Glengyle is distilling, Springbank is possibly silent. Then when Springbank is distilling, Glengyle might be silent - all because there are not enough shared resources to operate both at full capacity at once.

With a strong enough arm, Springbank and Glengyle are about a stone's throw from each other. Glen Scotia though? It sits on its own. The distillery lies off a ways from both these two - nearly a whole half-kilometre away from the two as the crow flies. Like it's Wee Toon’ cohort Springbank, the Glen Scotia Distillery itself is chock-full of grimy, Victorian, and industrial character in all of the right ways.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, back when Campbeltown was a more busy, industry-driven place with a bustling fishing port, Glen Scotia had much closer neighbouring distilleries. They actually abutted Glen Scotia Distillery itself - sitting just on the other sides of the walls that encase its lot. At this time, the story goes, Campbeltown had more distilleries than churches which themselves numbered more than thirty. Boom times eventually went bust, and for quite a while only two distilleries remained in the town, though that could have been considered one and a half for how little Glen Scotia operated in the early 2000s.

Andrew tells stories of visiting the Glen Scotia distillery more than a decade ago, when it was only sporadically in operation, and very uncared for. Much of the distillery equipment was falling apart. When Andrew and I visited in October of 2019, times had changed. We had a great tour through Glen Scotia’s operations, led by Distillery Manager Iain McAlister and saw that everything was in operation, the stillhouse had thick coats of paint over nearly every surface possible, and the stills were polished and running.

Glen Scotia Distillery is owned by the Loch Lomond Group, which also owns the Loch Lomond Distillery it is named after. Glen Scotia itself has a fairly robust lineup of five core releases at the moment, including the Double Cask, the Victoriana which was featured last year in our 2019 KWM Whisky Calendar, the 15 Year Old we will be tasting today, an 18-Year-Old, and a 25-Year-Old. There has even been a release of a 45 Year Old, though this is a lot more difficult and a lot more expensive to come by.

Back to the bottle, we will be tasting today. The Glen Scotia 15-Year-Old is aged mostly in American Oak casks and bottled at 46%. Shall we give it a go?

Glen Scotia 15-Year-Old - 46%

Mini bottles are available here

Evan's Tasting Note

Nose: Unctuous and coastal. Soy sauce, iron filings, graham crackers, dried cranberries, banana flambé with chocolate sauce, café mocha and Caramilk Bars.

Palate: Espresso coffee, Ocean Spray Cranberry Cocktail Juice, pineapple slices, dried mangoes, hoisin sauce, heavily steeped Earl Grey tea, chocolate-covered blueberries, shredded coconut and a touch of coastal salinity.

Finish: Soft and smooth with decadent fruit, milk chocolate and just a hint of peat and menthol.

Comment: What a piece of craftsmanship this whisky is! Such balance, yet such flavour. The more I taste Glen Scotia's official bottles, the more I am impressed.

Glen Scotia deserves more praise than it gets from us whisky lovers, and in no way should it play second fiddle to Springbank or Kilkerran Single Malts. The distillery makes amazing whisky and even has what could be thought of as a rustic 'Campbeltownian' style just as its two neighbours do. The peat is light on the Glen Scotia 15 Year Old, but we have technically had two days in a row of smoke and peat now. Will tomorrow's bottle make it three in a row? See you then and we will find out!

Cheers,
Evan
evan@kensingtonwinemarket.com
Twitter and Instagram: @sagelikefool