The Van Zuylen bit is between brackets in the title since this whisky came out as a shop bottling for Van Zuylen AND a regular bottling from WhiskyBroker. It seems they split the cask since it’s the same cask number and the same ABV (so no different bottling dates either).

Anyway, heavily sherried Glenrothes from 1997 have so far been hugely successful in my book, with the The Single Cask one being great, and the WhiskyBase version being ‘merely’ very good. I guess there’s no problem trying yet another one!

Images from WhiskyBase

Sniff:
Big, fat sherry, with the predictable but good dried fruits. Dates and plums. Some leathery shoe polish notes, and lots of oak. All very predictable, but also very good.

Sip:
Very, very dry. Much more so than expected. Also lots of chili heat. Lots of oak, lots of dried fruit. Lots of predictability.

Swallow:
The finish mellows very quickly until some burnt caramel/molasses/treacle sweetness remains.

Glenrothes’ spirit is used as a palette, but gets completely swamped. It’s good, but very predictable. You’re actually just getting fruity oak booze. At some point something like ‘too sherried’ exists, and this is it in my book. It’s just too much and at this point it could be neutral grain alcohol from a massively active sherry cask, I guess. A bit of a shame. Still rather tasty, but not a good ‘whisky’, and definitely shit if you’re trying to find out what Glenrothes’s character is.

If this drinking ‘sherry oak’ is what you like, you can get a bottle for 144 euros in Whiskybase’s Marketplace.

80/100

Glenrothes 1997-2016, 19 years old, Sherry Butt 7157, 53.5%.