The Cadenhead’s Club is a club I became aware of some two or three years ago. It’s similar to the Springbank Society (no surprise there, them being run from the same building, by the same owner), with a £ 50 lifetime membership.

The benefits were some bottlings here and there, and a heads up of new Cadenhead bottlings. Of course there was the option to order them before anyone else could. By about a week or so.

Pretty decent benefits, especially when you take in account that the club bottlings were ridiculously cheap. 25 year old Glen Grant for 75 quid, anyone?

However, Cadenhead only recently opened a proper web shop. Before that you had to write back that you wanted a bottle and hope the prices wasn’t too high. Any inquiry beforehand could cause you to be too late for some really popular ones.

Secondly, ever since Mark Watt left some time ago, it’s become very, very quiet. Of course, Corona hasn’t helped in the last couple of months, but it’s been some time since the last club bottling, or outturn email. I’m not sure if there’s any causality between these things, but I did notice the change in behaviour from Cadenhead.

Anyway, I had this blended, which comes from one sherry butt and one sherry hogshead sitting around and last weekend I decided it was a good time to empty it.

Sniff:
Lots of fruit and lots of malt. Peaches, oranges, barley sugar, slightly fatty, somehow.

Sip:
Fruity at first, but quickly becomes focused on the malt. Lots of dry grains, the oiliness that comes with it. Some fruit remains. Apricots, orange and the oiliness of its skin.

Swallow:
Lots more oak on the finish. Lots more straight forward sherry. Fruit, some baking spices and barley.

This is very much a drinking whisky. Easy going, not overly complex, but tasty enough to stand out from a lot of others, especially at the price point. I believe it cost 45 pounds when it came out, and that’s ridiculously cheap for a 20 year old whisky however you put it.

Good stuff, not stellar. A purchase that made me happy with some decent value for money. Which is rare, nowadays.

87/100

Cadenhead’s Club Blended Scotch Whisky, 20 years old, 1998-2019, 44.6%. No longer available, of course…