Official Bottling Duo Review | 46% ABV

Score: 6/10

**Good stuff.**
***TL;DR***
*Paying for the age, not the experience*

You never know what you have until you lose it.

It’s an old saying that many of us take for granted, regardless of the topic.

Sure, today’s topic is about senses but there are other far deeper truths to this simple statement; things like freedom from unjust persecution, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, relative lasting peace (since the last global war), and other significant trials and tribulations that many of us take for granted.

Personally, things have been hectic lately. We’ve bought a house, which means the elation of what’s to come is easily dwarfed by the requisite chaos and pandemonium of cleaning out our current house, staging it for pictures, and dealing with the constant showings and bookings while balancing work and kids. On top of it, right when we closed on the new place, I was at a conference, flogging my wares (brain) to keep work coming in for my team. Late night work sessions balanced precariously with dinner meetings, on top of multiple hour-plus presentations had me dog tired.

I’d noticed a shortage of breath creeping in but had chalked that up to very limited sleep and many things going on. The last night of the conference we held a team dinner. A 16 ounce bison tenderloin with a hefty Bourdeaux red was good but not as great as I had thought it should be, but again, I chalked it up to being very tired. It was only upon returning home did the deadening of my taste buds really sink in. I’m the household chef so I have a good handle on how things should taste. But now the food tasted like cardboard. Garlicky chorizo bolognese? Tasted like a pizza delivery box with traces of sauce soaked in. Bratwurst? Nada. Acid? I could drink a heavy, heavy lemon juice-water blend straight up without flinching (I’ve got kidney stones and no fracking way are they rearing their head while moving). Salt? My tastebuds had never heard of that lovely sodium chloride mineral.

It was frustrating; frustrating beyond belief in fact. I’ve previously admitted, and will reiterate again, that writing for Dramface is cathartic. It’s relaxing. It forces me to slow down. To focus. Center thyself. Remove emotion if you will.

Actually, now that I write that, it makes me sound like a Vulcan; all criticality and science and no emotion - quite unlike some other excellent writers here on Dramface (ahem, OS and DC). Perhaps that’s why our Master Splinter extraordinaire Wally coined me as “critical and objective” in our 1000th review landmark article; something that immediately earned my viking-esque quick temper (how dare he?!?). But upon further reflection, and as evidenced today, it was quite accurate. I take pride in that now and I suspect that many of you may have come to expect that from me.

So in the midst of chaos, one of my pressure relief valves was gone. I had no idea when it would come back. Days, months, years? Ever? I’d had Covid in the past but never lost my sense of taste, so this was uncharted territory for me. I had sensation at the perimeter of my tongue, picking up on very generic tastes and only certain isolated flavours. After a few days, I could feel it creeping inwards, as if my body was trying to claw towards the black hole of nothingness at the center of my tongue. It would then recede for a few days, serving as a tease of what could be, and dashing any chance of extrapolating the complete return of my taste. As someone generally in-tune with taste, it was unnerving and frustrating. After around ten days of this seesaw back and forth, I finally got about 50% of my tongue back.

The edges had a consistent ability to taste things, and the middle cancerous dead zone was fatiguing. A few more days later, and with a much-needed Colonials Zoom chat hangout sesh on the books, it appears my tastebuds were back in full force. Real world food tasted real. And whisky tasted like whisky. The world had righted itself.

Fast forward to now, things have settled down on all fronts. We’ve got an offer on our house, relieving that stress. My taste buds and senses are back to what they should be. Yippee! My available whisky collection is significantly reduced because I can’t (shouldn’t) have overflowing shelves and boxes of whisky littered about a house I’m trying to sell. So I’m working through quite a limited lens, something that is entirely foreign and uncomfortable to me, but is the fact of life for someone like our Ogilvie Shaw in the malt whisky desert in the US. But I will be returning to form and writing more for Dramface, that is until the actual move day happens at the end of May and then I leave for two subsequent weeks on back-to-back work-related trips in June. Life is fun isn’t it?

Review 1/2 - Broddy

Glen Scotia 18yo, Official bottling, batch 13.06.2023, 46% ABV
CAD$165 (£90) paid on discount, wide availability at around CAD$200 (£110)

I had purchased this bottle for a Campbeltown-only tasting I had hosted late 2024 with friends - featuring around 20 whiskies in a single evening. This whisky was purchased to go head-to-head against a 2023 batch of Kilkerran 16yo. On the evening, I had thought the KK16 was stunning (it still is) and this 18yo Scotia was peppery and thin in comparison. Fast forward 6-8 months, and we find ourselves with…

Nose

Fresh, round, sweet. No bite. Rich and alluring.

Bright fleshed fruit that alternates between crisp red apple and an apple danish. Raisin butter tart. Maple candied walnut. Oxidized warmth, like a steaming mug of cinnamon and sugar. Roasted hazelnuts. Smidge of citrusy furniture varnish.

Palate

Quite a deceiving palate. It enters slowly, thin and unassuming before building in intensity and lasts for a good while.

The front half is dark chocolate, white pepper, peaches, and roasted hazelnuts; again, it’s a subtle entry before building. Then comes the sweetness with maple candied nuts, baked apple danish, trail mix, dark vanilla undertones, ginger and tannin nibbles and faint raisin woodiness I sometimes get with old Cognac. The finish is a decline of the raisins, nuts, cinnamon and ginger.

The Dregs

This whisky has gotten better with some air time in the bottle. The nose has become more aromatic and profuse (I like it a lot) while the palate has lost some of the annoying spiciness, ending up more balanced than when I first cracked it. As one of the first few “critiqued” whiskies I’ve enjoyed since regaining my senses, I had hoped that my rose-tinted glasses would help here, but it was not in the cards.

This is a tough one to score. If you’ve read me for a while, you’ll know that I consider the role of price in my score, one of the few writers who do so routinely. This is a spendy bottle, even on discount like I did, and no use beating around the bush here. Is it worth it?

I don’t think so. It’s good, don’t get me wrong, but is it as good as well-aged single casks at cask strength? Not for me. I give this bottle a 6 to a 7 depending on the night. Considering the price here, I’ll settle on a 6. I so very much want to award this a 5/10, but the nose is the only saving grace here, and I mean only in the exact definition of the word. Air time has saved this 18yo from being relegated to the average bin with the nose turning into a snifter of sniff-me-more™. It’s a good whisky, but is priced poorly for the experience. Drop it 25% to match the Ancnoc 18yo in Canada and it’s in a more appropriate ballpark.

Personally, I’m off to snag a bottle of a Victoriana and the Double Cask PX, being able to purchase both roughly for the same price as this 18yo, and try to blend an equivalent of this. I think I could get close, but even if I don’t succeed, I enjoy each bottle more than this Scotia. Or I’ll reach behind me and snag my open bottle of Glen Scotia 15yo, given a lofty 8/10 by Drummond and a 7 by yours truly in the three-way review, and enjoy it much more than this three-year-older and much more expensive bottling; ‘objective and critical’ Broddy strikes again.

Wally piped up that he is working his way through a bottle and would like to share his thoughts so let’s see what he has to say.

Score: 6/10 BB

Review 2/2 - Wally

Glen Scotia 18yo, Official bottling, batch 23.01.2024, 46% ABV
£104 paid on discount, wide availability at around £120 RRP

Given this is an 18 year old Campbeltown whisky, I picked it up for a very reasonable £104. The RRP is currently a little more than that, but it’s still under the frustratingly greedy market-calibrated (notional, arbitrary?) prices knocking around for 18 year old single malt from sought-after sources these days. In that light we might suggest it’s actually a fair price, but it’s still too expensive: for the market, for its position amongst its peers and certainly for the drinking experience, which we’ll get to. But first a quick summary of where we’re at with Glen Scotia.

It’s been under the stewardship of the Loch Lomond Group since the turn of the century. LLG is a company currently building a name for itself, blow-by-blow, for remarkable and interesting whiskies that seem to get better with time. In my opinion, Loch Lomond malt isn’t just better - it’s much better. Under that stewardship, Glen Scotia is following a similar trend.

Closed for much of the 1980s and 1990s, it was a distillery that was left to wither, with part of the operations infamously ‘operating’ without a roof at one point. When LLG first took the reins it restarted production with help from the experienced staff from Springbank, finally taking full control of its own destiny from 2000 onwards. It’s most definitely a story of renaissance.

A few false starts and disco cows aside, it’s doing very well these days and it’s finding real, invested fans the world over. While it can occasionally suffer a little unintentional shade thrown by the fervour for everything Springbank, it is once more a strong brand that can more-or-less hold its own against its neighbour located a short walk down the hill. These days whisky botherers like me like to take the walk up the hill for a nosy. It needs more staff to welcome us, but it’s doing way better than it ever has.

But something is holding it back. We’ll forgive it for now, but the investment and changes that have gradually built up the quality and consistency of the malt produced today - both peated and unpeated - are not always making it into the bottle without being unnecessarily footered with. Its positioning has climbed exponentially in our eyes over the twenty five years since its rebirth, yet it still desperately needs to be unshackled from ambiguity and neither fish-nor-fowl bottlings that are made to appease rather than please.

Just as an illustration, we have a 40% ABV 10 year old in supermarkets which I don’t recommend you bother with, and that’s fine, or it would be, if we had a fully natural ten or twelve year old to go with it, but we don’t. Well, not yet. We hear they’re working on it. It’s needed.

We have a NAS Double Cask which is fully natural, and another which isn’t, alongside each other. This is progress, since the fully natural, no colour added Rum Cask Edition came later, but they need to free the PX version to that same honesty.

They made the switch on Victoriana - it has been natural since the slightly coloured first batch, but the rest of the age-stated range, all venerably mature 15, 18, 21 and 25 year olds, feature no statements of natural colour. So they at least ‘reserve the right’ to add colour to reach batch ‘specification’. This is a shame.

Across the range, there’s laziness here. Or a nervousness, I’m not sure which. Laziness perhaps manifests in the product development or commercial teams who might not know how to convince their distributors and markets that natural is best? Splashing in some E150a and letting the aesthetics do the selling could be easier, I suppose. But it isn’t better. It’s never better.

Perhaps it’s a nervous lack of conviction to just follow the brightest torch bearer in the industry; its closest neighbour who, to my knowledge, does not use E150a for anything they bottle there, not even their blends.

Anyway, I think what we have in this 18 year old is a bottle which will get immeasurably better in the years ahead. We’ve said it before, but it’s worth repeating; the younger malts at Glen Scotia are astonishingly good. As they reach maturity, all that the recent investment in distillation, expansion and casks needs to thrive is some canny stewardship. There’s a dedicated role these days filled by Ashley Smith, the Glen Scotia Master Blender; we wish her well.

Let’s see where their 18yo sits in 2025.

Score: 6/10

**Good stuff.**
***TL;DR***
*Good, but likely to get better*

Nose

Quiet at first, but time brings soft hayloft and Horlicks, with a little spritz of hairspray. This dissipates to reveal a sweet citrus and tropical fruit nose rich in tinned mandarin, peach juice and runny honey. Some green banana and melon rind too, with a little beeswax and patisserie pastries.

Palate

A lighter-than expected body upon arrival, with satsumas, peaches and sweet vanillas. The honey kicks in with a spiced heat, not quite chilli or pepper, but heat nonetheless, not off putting at all. There’s also a milky chocolate mid-palate, which endures to the finish. It ends on a drying, slightly oak-tinged bitterness with decent length. Despite the mid-palate heat, it’s delicate overall with good balance, but lacks intensity or depth.

For me water does little to enhance the nosing but is harmful to the palate, it’s absolutely best neat.

The Dregs

I’m left with a feeling of wonder with this. I’d rather have spent £20 (or more) less on a single cask of younger Scotia. There’s some prettiness to this 18 year old, but it needs a little ‘something’ that most of us know exists in their younger spirit. While I’m glad to have it, it’ll be an occasional visit and while it does have the potential to grow over time, it’ll need a little air and patience.

Yet, my feeling is that it’s the product of transition; of getting better. The stock this is made from would have been distilled during a time when they were still dialling everything in, still evolving perhaps, and working out what the long-term production campaigns would look like. It would likely have been filled into different casks, of potentially different quality. Of course I’m guessing, but as such it feels like it’s closer in tone to the better releases from the slightly fickle, risky purchases of old official Glen Scotias.

It is not an expensive bottle, for an 18 year old or a Campbeltown of this presentation, and you won’t regret having it, I’m pretty sure. Perhaps the problem is me in that I’m comparing this to my belief of what I feel could exist just around the corner with fresher stocks and a more integrity-forward ethos.

For now, I’m happy I bought it and I really hope I still have some left when Glen Scotia eventually just rip the plaster off and go all natural. It fits the vibe of everything else they’re building towards.

And everything else in Campbeltown.

Score: 6/10 WMc

Tried this? Share your thoughts in the comments below. BB

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