Glen Garioch 13yo Fragrant Drops
Ex-bourbon full maturation. Cask 3374 | 58.2% ABV
Score: 8/10
Something Special.
TL;DR
Classic Geery with a lot going on.
Pick of the Bunch
The realisation that Glasgow Whisky Festival weekend was two weeks ago already only leads into further grudging acceptances: a year has passed in the blink of an eye, and it’s almost Christmas.
It’s a bit ridiculous really, and if I’m being completely honest with myself, I was neither 100% match fit or 100% willing to get back in the car and travel away from the island, having only just returned from the shock and awe of New York City. Arriving back to find a very poorly Mini Crystal and a creeping illness begin its snaking progress in yours truly, cemented the sentiment.
New York City is insanity incarnate. The perpetual drone of bald balloon tyres on ribbed tarmac, peppered with all manner of abrupt, aggressive horn blasting every second beat, and sirens wailing and people shouting and billboard eyeball searing and ICE arresting and No Kings marching. It was a polarising experience; in the same way as having a molten wax laced strip applied comprehensively to your scrotum, and unapplied at pace, is polarising.
Inner peace is for the weak. People have things to be doing. Even at 3am when the body clock opened my wibbling eyes and the sweaty drifting of consciousness began, an ambulance pitched its way loudly past the window because there’s folk that might need waking up. I wear earplugs to sleep and force some semblance of quiet upon my fuzzy brain, but just how anyone else manages to get nightly rest in this city, I don’t know.
I ate fried chicken for breakfast. I craned my neck at buildings higher than the hills behind my house. We walked the High Line and peered into windows, where people watered window plants and pretended to work in their designer dining rooms. Ate pizza slices the size of dinner plates, drank jugs of spicy margaritas and stuffed burning tacos into my smiling face, all accompanied by noise, everywhere, all the time.
Two long flights followed by a three-hour car journey and I was back where I belonged: on an island, standing in a field with rabbits bouncing about, the sound of an eagle overhead and the Hairy Bullet eating nondescript animal plops. As far as reinforcement of decisions goes, the wrap-around travel experience of vaulting from the Misty Isle to the Big Apple and back again within six days has been definitive. I can’t ever live in a town or city again. My eyeballs are still shaking.
Despite the reluctance to leave the island so soon after returning to blissful distance and atmospheric freshness (the contrast in air quality, Holy Christmas), I was more than jazzed at the prospect of a weekend of fun with my whisky peeps. Last year I landed in Edinburgh from a work trip to London, whipping cross-country to arrive just in time for Friday’s under the table tasting, and then onwards through the festival and Sunday’s Blind Challenge. This year I headed down early doors Friday, checking in slowly and prepared myself to get the most out of the weekend.
I’ve never had more fun in the whiskysphere, and with hotels already booked for 2026, the prospect of doing it all again can’t come quickly enough. Since New York and Glasgow, I’ve been in an aeroplane once more, down to London for a final sign-off before Christmas. It was great fun too, but the quick succession of trips has knackered me. November disappeared, and I sit now with nothing scheduled between now and 2026. I can’t say I’m unhappy about it.
So quick has the weeks flown by that I remembered that I was yet to pop open the one purchase I made at Glasgow Whisky Festival 2025 - this Fragrant Drops Glen Garioch 13yo, which many people leaped for, and few people found. There was something about the zing around the bread and butter pudding that made me more interested in it.
It goes without much saying that I bloody love Glen Garioch whisky. I love the malty purple-ness of it all, and I enjoy the dense buttery fruitiness of it all. It’s a divisive whisky, with some finding foost, some finding it dusty and others just plain not getting the hype. More for me then; right now Geery registers more keenly than other whiskies.
Review
Glen Garioch 13yo, Fragrant Drops 2025 release, fresh ex-bourbon cask 3374, distilled 31.10.2011 - bottled 11.09.2025, 58.2% ABV
£77.95 still available online (I paid £67.95 using my £10 GWF voucher)
My past few dalliances with the Geery have been in a myriad of Sherry infused joy machines, from the Amontillado of the Cadenhead’s Warehouse Tasting bottle, or the weird Berry Bros. bottling that still feels like a cork has been naughty. We even got to try the 27yo Glen Garioch matured in some unknown sherry cask through the Under the Table Tasting and Thompson Brother’s inimitably stylish bottle. That also didn’t work for me, but others absolutely loved the sharpness of it.
But this is pure Glen Garioch - undisturbed from birth into an ex-bourbon hogshead, this is the unfettered, unfiddled expression that brings maximum exposure to what the Oldmeldrum spirit can achieve, and to get some semblance of comparison with a similar spirit, I’ve decided to unpeel the tin upon the very last bottle of the Adelphi 11yo Glen Garioch for the AD/Venturers I had sitting for a rainy day.
Luckily for me it rained today.
Score: 8/10
Something Special.
TL;DR
Classic Geery with a lot going on.
Nose
Fresh, bright cedar/oak. Woody. Blueberries & purple heather. Fresh milk. Vanilla. Burnt sugar. Icing sugar. Bit of sand. Lime rind. Black cherry. Chalk. Burnt tattie scone. Salty. Wet horse. Fresh linen!? Meaty wind - kebab shop. Stones.
Palate
Buttery, bready, purple. Oaky. Peppery floral. Cinnamon pears. Spicy toffee. Souring, sharpening. Grapefruit. Creamy. Sriracha
With water: malty purple enhances. Big woosh of fabric bolts. Sweet oak and pine sap. Coriander. Chives, herbs. Tomato sauce. Grapefruit or similar sharp, zesty fruit.
The Dregs
The Fragrant Drops is excellent. Where some Geery treads a steady path of bread and butter pudding, with flakes of purple, this weaves a meandering path. It really does cover the gamut of flavours, from sweets to sours, meaty to funky and many things in between. How can a whisky go from smelling like a wet horse to a minute later smelling like fresh linen? I don’t know, but this does it.
It’s a very tasty whisky, and in this case I think a touch of water or two really does open it up nicely. The ABV is high and it reads like it, with prickly heat that, depending on how many drams you’re into on the night, can be a problem or invisible. Water smooths the way, and all of a sudden there’s waves of new flavours - bolts of fabric, sweet oak and pine sap, forest floors and damp leaves. Even fleeting minty notes appear beside more of the classic Geery purple maltiness. Bloody great whisky.
Turning to the glass of Adelphi Geery, and something changes. The strong grip of the FD is exchanged for space, wide-open space. If the FD was a dense tunnel of intensity, lights flashing and scents blasting, then the Adelphi is like walking from that into a wide-open sunlit garden, a technicolour of open flavours - space, air. It might be younger, but it feels more settled.
It's different whisky. I’m lost in the liquid gold of both these bottles, and it shows the strength of Glen Garioch at just over a decade and more. I wonder if Geery excels in ex-bourbon more than it does in sherry? Maybe it’s a purist’s distillate.
However, checking back on my reviews of Glen Garioch, I note that a lot of my 8’s are for Geery matured in port - White Port, Tawny Port, but also an Amontillado Sherry. Maybe it’s fairer to say that it’s safer in Bourbon casks - a lot of my disappointing Geery experiences were in sherry.
I love the Adelphi Geery. It’s caught me by surprise. I know that I scored it 9/10 last time I reviewed it in 2023, and I know that my memories of this whisky were loving, but my goodness it’s whacked me across the face this time.
I suppose one forgets about the truth of any whisky one's tried, if enough time has passed. It’s become a crystallised memory. It contorts into a surmised moment in time. Later on, sometimes years on, a whisky reminds you of the whisky you almost remember. A gilded, embellished idea - a concept.
But, if you're fortunate and have one to hand, you can remind yourself. In the reminding you realise that the whisky that jogged the memory, spooled the aging platters of your frontal cortex, is actually nothing close to reality. The memory, long lost to other whisky and the ability to bank so much smell and taste, is resurrected.
Sometimes it’s revealed to be even better - the expanded experience of palate affords a greater ability to extract and enjoy. Sometimes it’s a pale imitation of what you had made that whisky into, in your mind.
Either way it surpasses the present at speed, formulating a new memory; a memory more resolved, more concrete. More definite and absolute. It becomes undeniable. Distance lends perspective.
Distance positions greatness. Whilst the Fragrant Drops is excellent whisky, and ticks all the boxes that I’d ever wish for a whisky at this price, with this quality, and with the same excellence to which Fragrant Drops hold themselves, the re-introduction of the Adelphi reminds me that a reference point was set the last time I killed a bottle; a height to which very few subsequent expressions have soared.
The FD brought my mind towards that of the towering marker of greatness that is the Adelphi AD/Venturers Glen Garioch. The revisiting of greatness has shown that greatness has now resolved into legend. Beyond reproach.
I don’t think, having now tried enough Glen Garioch in ex-Bourbon casks over 10 years maturation and beyond, that anything shares the same rarefied air as the Adelphi. It’s the gold standard of Geery for me. Unbeatable thus far. Thus. Far. I need to keep the powder dry for if any other Glen Garioch comes along and usurps it; but I tell you what, it will take a monumental effort to do so.
Two absolutely cracking Glen Garioch bottlings right here, for great prices too. The gold mine of Geery keeps on giving.
Score: 8/10
Tried this? Share your thoughts in the comments below. DC
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