Glen Moray – 1994 Sherry Cask Finish
Well here we have a 22+ year old whisky from the Speyside kings at Glen Moray. This expression sits outside of the distillery’s standard offerings from within their Elgin ranges and so offers up something rare and limited that fans of the distillery will no doubt wish to get their hands on. The competition to do so will probably ramp up even further now with more whisky punters trying to get their hands on a bottle after it has been awarded the title of “Best Speyside Single Cask Singe Malt” during the World Whisky Awards 2018. Reportedly, the whisky has been matured for 16 years in a bourbon barrel before then being finished for a final 6 years in a sherry cask. Bottled at dizzying 56.7% ABV, let’s see if this deserves top prize…
Nose
That’s a nice, thick, and heady nose off the bat. Get past the boozy blast (though it’s not as potent as the digits would let on) and there’s stewed orange and dark fruits at play with a warmth of autumn/winter spices for good measure. It’s also got a good cake-y smell to it – along the lines of a sticky toffee pudding or treacle tart.
Taste
The taste just amplified everything that the nose had to offer. Big fruit flavours at the fore here, such as oranges, cherries and raisins. There’s more of an added sugary sweetness to the flavour too that then gets wrapped up in a wintry warmth with cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon. It’s all there.
Finish
Man that alcohol finally shows up on the finish. Woah. Lingering finish of fruit cake courtesy of that classic sherry and oak combo.
Verdict
It’s too easy these days to get wrapped up in awards and titles and to unintentionally pre-judge a whisky by its numbers and processes. Just sit back and think for a moment. This whisky was first distilled and put into a cask when Alanis Morrisette first started writing Jagged Little Pill and when Oasis were just making it big in the UK with Definitely Maybe. That’s a long time, our kid. (Probably a travesty for anyone from outside Manchester to use that phrase, sorry). Since those releases came out a lot has happened and whilst both albums have drifted from breakthrough status to being considered “classics” of their era, during that whole time, this whisky has been sat there. What has it been doing? Well, for one it has really been absorbing the flavours of the barrels’ former contents and it is worth the wait. As the name suggests, yes it is a sherry rich whisky, but it is rounded off at the edges by the sweeter influences and is all the better for it. Part of me doesn’t want to give any credence to awards and gold medals, as I believe that the whisky should just be enjoyed by the individual drinking it, but this dram does rate very highly in my book and deserves high praise. Plus, you’ve got to admit that with such a large panel at the World Whisky Awards that does feature some big names on it (Charles Maclean for one) it’s probably worth checking this out (if you can get your hands on some). In short, this whisky really does taste like it is a rock and roll star.
M
Since 2006, the Norfolk-based distillery has been making whisky and operating under the name of St. George’s Distillery, run by the English Whisky Company (EWC) – the “cheeky bastards!” as actor David Hayman once put it. Following some recent transatlantic grumblings however, the St. George brand has been put to bed here in Blighty and the EWC has now re-branded itself as the English Whisky Company outright, and with it released two new mini-ranges: “The English” and “The Norfolk” – which will run along side the ongoing chapter naming convention. For the purpose of this exercise, we are examining the “Original” release of The English (as opposed to the Smokey release), which is a no-age-statement single malt release, bottled at 43% ABV.
