Until very recently I had not heard of King Canmore, or the whisky brand with his name. The company behind the brand, Charles Edge, was also new to me. By what I see on Whiskybase that’s not too surprising since their first bottlings are only from 2021.

They kindly sent over a handful of samples for reviewing purposes, from the UK, which was my first post Brexit booze shipment, and the first run in with a little bit of taxes in that regard.

Apart from a couple of single casks, Canmore also releases some blended whiskies which I will review at a later date.

Canmore was king of then Scotland in the eleventh century. I’m not entirely sure how thing worked back then, because there seem to have been a lot of ‘first kings of Scotland’ and I read somewhere the Canmore was considered that as well. Even though he inherited the title from his father.

Anyway, the whisky. Glen Garioch is a bit of a strange one. They have had some insanely good whiskies in the past, suffered from the Morrison-Bowmore Soapy decade in the 1980s, stopped peating in the early nineties and have not been able to fully capitalize on the huge surge of single malt whisky afterwards. That last bit is very much from my perspective, mind.

The output from the distillery is not always consistent and can go in many directions in regard to flavor and aroma. Let’s see where this one sits.

Sniff:
There’s this scent of unrefined spirit. As in, even though it’s 12 years old, it’s not unlike some far younger spirits. Now Glen Garioch can be a bit unrefined, but this is slightly weird. After a few minutes it gets significantly better and starts showing some notes of pastry, straw, oak and a hint of leather.

Sip:
The palate opens up really nicely, with notes that fit the Canmore theme of white pepper and dry oakiness. There’s a bit of a vanilla and pastry sweetness. There’s coconut husks, straw.

Swallow:
The finish continues down the same line but adds flavor of sherbert and parma violets. Not out of the ordinary for a distillery owned by Morrison-Bowmore (now part of Beam-Suntory).

So, a strange one indeed. The initial aromas coming from the whisky were not very promising, but that cleared up hugely after a minute or so. There are some nice pastry notes that add some sweetness but not too much. Quite a solid whisky, to be honest.

85/100

Available from Charles Edge for 68 quid, also from TopWhiskies