I generally quite like Glen Moray. Especially from independent bottlers, because the official bottlings tend to be rather too soft and gentle, almost a bit flat. Of course, they bottle all kinds of randomness at the distillery through the Distillery Only bottlings, up to peated sherry bombs even.

Back in 2011-ish the SMWS released some great 35 year old bottlings that I really loved, and Cadenhead has been releasing some early nineties stuff over the last couple of years. When this one showed up in Jon Beach’s Advent Calendar I was curious to find out where this one would land!

Sniff:
Fresh apple, dried apple, grilled pineapple, some honey sweetness. Sweet licorice, barley.

Sip:
The palate continues on the dried and grilled pineapple, with quite some honey sweetness. Some peppery heat from the alcohol, but otherwise a very comfortable dram to drink. Some baked apple sweetness, with sugary puff pastry. A bit of baking spice.

Swallow:
The finish shows more barley and less pineapple. Honey, caramel. All in all a bit sweeter on the finish. Slightly more typical of Glen Moray.

It’s very nicely fruity with quite some different flavors going on. The finish goes in the direction of generic Speyside honey flavors and doesn’t continue with the fruity notes of the palate, which is a bit of a pity. The licorice note on the nose was interesting too.

87/100

This is still available in Italy for € 119.