There are two reasons anyone buys a bottle of whisky. Either you have heard so much about it that curiosity finally wins. Alternatively, you have actually tasted it, at an event or at a friend’s house, and you go out and buy it.
But there is a third, and this is where the fun comes in. You take a chance. And this time, it paid off handsomely for me.
How it happened
At Whisky Live Tel Aviv, my friend Tony Nachshon and I spent a very pleasant stretch – frankly, quite a long stretch – at the Fruitful Spirits booth, working our way through a good part of their range. Brand ambassador, Andrew Wilson, was very generous with his time with us. I walked away with warm feelings and a distinct urge to buy something from them.
Here is a free lesson for every brand at every whisky show: that is how a stand sells bottles. Nobody pushed me. Andrew simply made us welcome and thus a reason to trust their selection of indies. And I did not check the reviews before I produced my credit card.
At the same time, Glen Garioch had been sitting on my wish list for a long while. I wanted something a little off the beaten track, and the distillery’s reputation has been growing steadily, particularly on the back of its 12 year old.
So, when I was browsing the Fruitful Spirits catalogue and spotted a 13 year old Glen Garioch at a sensible price (sensible for Israel, which is admittedly a relative term), the two threads met. I took a chance.
A distillery that reinvented itself
It is pronounced “glen geery”. Glen Garioch is one of the oldest distilleries in Scotland, founded in 1797. It sits in the Garioch valley, long known as the granary of Aberdeenshire for the quality of its barley.
Its survival owes a great deal to the most basic ingredient of all: water. By the late 1960s the distillery was struggling for supply, and that helped push it into closure in 1968. When Stanley P. Morrison (later Morrison Bowmore) bought it in 1970, a new source was found on a nearby farm. It was a spring you could neither see nor hear, promptly nicknamed the Silent Spring, and it allowed production to grow roughly tenfold. One of Scotland’s oldest distilleries, rescued by a spring nobody could find. Bizarre.
Closed again in 1995 and then reopened two years later as an unpeated distillery, it leans on first-fill bourbon casks to suit a fruitier spirit. And it now has its own malting floor, not so common these days.
Why this bottle ticked my boxes
- First-fill bourbon barrel (2nd batch)
- Cask strength at a very healthy 56.9% ABV
- Comfortably past 12 years: distilled in 2011, bottled at 13
- Non-chill-filtered and natural colour
- A fair price for what it is – I paid around 300 shekels.
Tasting notes
Normally a new bottle sits on my desk for a while, tempting me and waiting for an occasion worthy of it. This one lasted a couple of days. The colour alone was doing most of the persuading, as you can see from the photo.
There was no satisfying pop when the cork came out, sadly. There was, however, a very healthy glug as the neck pour disappeared into the glass.
Nose: Immediately appealing. Rich, chocolatey, almost aromatic. I confess I did not linger long before diving in.
Palate: This is where it won me over. The lemony vanilla you often expect from first-fill bourbon was not dominant. Instead came something sweet, like baked pears, followed by winter fruits, apples and a touch of barley sugar. Succulent, and it had me reaching for the next sip rather quickly.
Finish: The weak spot. It is short. But the palate teases so effectively that a short finish mostly means you come back sooner. There are worse problems to have.
With water: I tried it and, honestly, it does not need it. Water did not soften or open up anything I could detect, which surprised me at 56.9%. By the way, I have since seen a few reviews describing this whisky as sour. I do not find that at all. It is sweet but never oversweet; something holds it back.
The verdict
Sometimes you buy the bottle everyone talks about. Sometimes you buy the one you tasted. And sometimes a good afternoon at a whisky show, a long-standing curiosity and a fair price all line up at once, and you take a chance.
I am delighted I did.
Slàinte!
