When I received the lovely box that Adrian Hoose sent me, I immediately made a plan how to review the fine samples that were in it. Nothing fancy, just going upwards with the age of the whisky. I struggled with these two though. Two whisky’s distilled at the same distillery and following eachother in age. Let’s put them both in one review and compare them.
Glen Keith has, on more then one occasion, surprised us with some very nice bottlings. All of them independently bottled. That shouldn’t be a big surprise because only in the 1990’s a few official bottlings were released. Almost all of the produced spirit is part of different Chivas Regal blends.
Glen Keith is quite a young distillery being built in 1958. In 1999 the distillery was mothballed still leaving some nice casks filled with spirit in the Chivas warehouses. I would have expected all of them to be used in the blends but still some of these casks are bottled by independents. And so it happened that two casks were bought an bottled by Claxton’s.
First up is the youngest of the two. This whisky was distilled in november 1995 and was watured in a hogshead (cask #1833-171290) before being bottled recently at an age of 22years. No chill filtering or artificial coloring of course. The cask delivered 311 bottles at a 49,2% ABV cask strength.
- Nose: Sweet vanilla, some citrus, almonds and a hint of apples
- Taste: Some cinnamon spicyness, a nice and smooth mouthfeel. More sweet apple and som nutty flavours
- Finish: Nice length, again the sweet apples.
Well balanced dram. My rating: 86 points. Very nice!
Time to put the oldest to the test. There are some differences between the two. The spirit was distilled in december 1994. They used a Bourbon barrel with casknumber 1837-157671 to mature the spirit in. After 23 years the whisky was bottlrd at cask strength 51% delivering only 145 bottles.
- Nose: Sweet notes of citrus and vanilla. Lots of it!
- Taste: Creamy arrival with just a hint of peppery spice. Sweet citrus fruit and some apple notes
- Finish: Again a nice length with nice and sweet fruit notes.
I like this one just a bit more than the 22yo although there are some similarities. My rating: 88 points. Well done!
Adrian Hoose, thanks for these very nice samples!
