Glen Moray is one of those distilleries that tends to have a style that is fairly generic. It makes a perfectly decent Speyside style whisky, but often it doesn’t really make memories. However, some times what comes from the Elgin distillery is utterly stunning.

As I’ve said on this blog a number of times, those 35 year old SMWS bottlings from little over a decade ago were epic, but also some of the distillery’s own stuff is really good. I fondly remember going through their range after visiting the distillery in 2018. A peated sherry cask matured Distillery Only bottling comes to mind.

This one, bottled by a German bottler for their market to our east came from a sample from Tom van Engelen, of guest post fame. Let’s see where it sits.

Sniff:
Rather spirity with quite a lot of sweet fruity notes. Heaps of banana and apple sauce. Very ripe pear and sweet notes of vanilla, oak and pastry.

Sip:
The palate brings some white peppery heat, a lot of sweetness and vanilla. Unfortunately, apart from the sweet notes it feels a little bit thin. Banana, ripe pear, pastry. Overly sweet fruit cordial, with pepper.

Swallow:
The finish loses a lot of the sweetness, but the pepper steps up to fill the space left by the sweetness.

It’s a bourbon cask all right. Quite on the sweet side, and in this case that’s not only from the cask usage. The spirit itself is also rather sweet, and shows the big fruity notes that make it typical for the distillery. However, in the end it’s not overly complex and a bit too simple for a higher score. Decent, but not great.

84/100

Still available in Germany for € 70