This review deserves an introduction.

A while ago I was interviewed for Dutch whisky magazine ‘Whisky Passion‘. The interviewer (also a blogger) was writing an article on whisky blogging versus ‘old fashioned’ whisky writing. He also interviewed Mark Dermul, and told me he was planning to make the article into a short series with other bloggers as well.

To get some interaction between print and digital media going he also gave Mark and me a sample of this whisky to review and publish our notes on the same day. Which, obviously, is today.

Now, to not make an ass of myself, I tasted this whisky twice to make sure I got as many notes and references as possible, and to see how consistent I am. I know I’m not all that consistent, based on my Rosebank 25 experiment a year ago.

Image from Whiskybase

Sniff:
The first you’re going to notice is the sherry. As with most Glengoynes there’s a lot of it. Not in a ridiculously overpowering way, but there’s a lot. Some spices and a heap of dried fruits. I get peaches, apricots, plums and dates. I’d put my money on Oloroso sherry. There’s a strange hint of something cheese like, in a good way. That might be the yeasty quality of the sherry. The spices are mostly black pepper, and I get a hint of flint.

Fun thing, I got the dark dried fruits (dates and plums) in the first try. The peaches and apricots in the second.

Sip:
The palate is more gentle than I expected of a 58%+ dram. Lots of fruit and sweet sherry again. Some spices, baking spices, pepper. Apricot, peaches and plums again. Very sweet, very fruity, very tasty. I’d say they used some old and new casks in this to get the combination of strong spirit and old sherry together. Slightly creamy.

Swallow:
The sherry is very prominent here. Full and sweet, more of a PX style than Oloroso. Creamy, dried fruit, pastry cream. Quite dry and long.

Almost every distillery is releasing a NAS cask strength whisky nowadays. GlenDronach is also doing things right, according to all the reviews, and I think Glengoyne is a worthy competitor. The style is different but the sherry and high powered ABV works very well in this case.

The whisky is incredibly fruity, with enough spices and oak to balance it out a bit. If you don’t like sherry, this isn’t for you, though. I do like it. And I do like this dram. A lot. Especially the gentle dried fruits and surprisingly smooth palate make this whisky a cracker.

Glengoyne Cask Strength Batch 3, 58.2%. Prices are around € 50-55 in The Netherlands