GlenDronach Revival 15 Year Old

GlenDronach is the undisputed world leader in sherry maturation, creating the world’s finest examples of 100% sherry matured whisky. In the very early days many distilleries used Spanish sherry casks for maturation, but nowadays these casks are 10 times more expensive than American Oak ex-bourbon casks, hence the ubiquitous bourbon matured malt whisky that we see on the market today. With 200 years of sherry maturation under the belt, today GlenDronach is one of only two distilleries that specialise in sherry maturation, and the only one to use sherry casks exclusively for primary maturation of all of its whiskies.

A resurrection of the original 15 Year Old “100% Sherry Casks” that was hugely popular in the 1990s, the GlenDronach 15 Year Old Revival is bottled at 46%, non-chill filtered and of natural colour. It’s fully matured in Oloroso sherry puncheons, giving it a deep gold colour with a lovely mahogany heart. These high quality sherry casks are vital in producing an incredible concentration of aromas and flavours including chocolate orange, raisins, dates, coffee and treacle. Adding to this, the mashing water for GlenDronach comes from the Balnoon Burn, an underground water source high in mineral content, which leads to a full-bodied whisky that is rich in flavour.

The GlenDronach stills are worth a short discussion. The distillery was closed for five months during 2005 in order to convert the stills from coal-fired to steam heating, a change required by EU Health & Safety rules which no longer allow coal-fired stills. There is some debate as to whether or not this will change the character of the whisky, with one camp arguing that coal-fired stills cause an uneven distribution of heat, leading to ‘hotspots’, which result in nice caramel and toffee flavours, whereas with steam heating the distribution of heat is more even and these caramel and toffee characters are less evident. The youngest Glendronach release is the 12 Year Old Original, which means we have another two to three years to wait before the first batch of mature spirit from the new stills is bottled, hopefully they are wrong.