Glen Scotia 18 Year

Tasting Notes

Andrew's Tasting Note

Nose: soft, decadent, creamy and floral; bright orange, clean smoke and soft maritime notes; doughy with dried apricots and peaches n cream.

Palate: rounded and bolder than expected; loads of toasty floral vanilla, sweet honey and clean ashy smoke; staying in the stone/orchard fruit vein with more dried apricots, peaches n cream and orange pith; also tarte tatin and grilled pear; savoury with a salty-briny backbone.

Finish: long, elegant and coating; stays floral, smoky and salty with fading stone and orchard fruits.

Comment: I still can't wrap my head around how whisky, made at a time when Glen Scotia was practically crumbling, the wort fermenting in rusting washbacks, and filled manly in to tried old wood, despite all its disadvantages, more often than not, still turns out good; especially in its late teens and twenties!

Producer Tasting Note

Nose: An elegant nose with crisp saltiness, perfumed floral notes, sweet honey and salted caramel.

Taste: An incredibly smooth and rich palate, with fruity flavours and thick sweet toffee. Expect notes of apricots, pineapple and plump sultana, with a gentle warming spice throughout.

Finish: Long and dry, with gentle warming spice.

Whisky Advocate Tasting Note (91pts!)

“New for 2017, this was matured for 17 years in bourbon casks before being finished in oloroso sherry casks for 1 year. The nose is fragrant, with prunes, oranges, vanilla, and faint wood polish. Ultimately, ozone. Silky palate delivery, with sweet sherry, honey, and dark chocolate-coated orange fondant creams, then a note of angelica. The finish offers spicy plain chocolate and a suggestion of sea salt.”

Distillery

Originally posted on our blog by Evan for KWM's 2019 and 2020 Whisky Calendars.

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 should not be forgotten that Campbeltown is home to three distilleries: Springbank, Glengyle (bottled as Kilkerran), and Glen Scotia. 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. Also like both Springbank and Kilkerran, Glen Scotia Distillery lies within the town itself.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, back when Campbeltown was a more industry-driven place and with a more bustling fishing port, Glen Scotia had neighbouring distilleries on the other sides of the walls that encase its lot. At this time, the story goes, the town 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 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 obviously 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 just so happens to be owned the Loch Lomond Group, which we have seen three times already in this year’s calendar with the Inchmurrin 18 Year, the Inchmoan 12 Year, and the Loch Lomond 18 Year. Glen Scotia itself has a fairly robust lineup of five core releases at the moment, including the Double Cask, Victoriana, 15-Year-Old, 18-Year-Old, and 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.