Fragrant Drops Holyrood 5yo
Fresh Bourbon Single Cask | 57.6% ABV
Score: 7/10
Very Good Indeed.
TL;DR
Fruity, ferment-y goodness
Alas, life catches up on us
For us folk here in the French capital, we are approaching the end of our summer holiday season. It’s always hard to come back to work in September, leaving a sunny beach, awe-inspiring mountainside or peaceful countryside to find out that our familiar Parisian rain and stressed out citizens have been waiting for us all summer long.
Don’t get me wrong, I like my job. But a job is a job, and sometimes one needs a break. Often, in my case. In order to occasionally escape, Mrs Fife and I have been to quite a few places during the past few years: the French Côte d’azur, Edinburgh, Strasbourg, Corsica, Portugal and even Montreal and Québec back in 2023. But one thing we hadn’t done in quite a while was a good ol’ fashioned road trip.
Something had to be done about that, as I immensely enjoy this type of travel. Vague plans, take the road and see where it leads you. We also have a lot of friends and family dotted around the country and this serves as a great excuse to visit them.
The road trip was set to take two full weeks, from the 10th to the 25th of August. By the end of July, we felt that a warm up was needed. We arranged a week in the countryside of Auvergne at a friend’s house for the first days of August, but we couldn’t wait and decided to spend a short weekend with a couple of friends in Etretat, in Normandie, just before the “proper” holidays.
Etretat is a coastal village of about 1000 inhabitants in the winter and 10 times that in the summer. That’s in no small part due to the jaw dropping views you can enjoy from the cliffs on either side of the city’s white pebble beach. We only spent 2 days there, but when you live in the fourth most densely populated city in the world, a whiff of fresh air from time to time does wonders. This was also the weekend of my first Casino gains ever; 9€. A hundred years from now, people will sing songs about it.
After closing up the shop for the summer, we headed down south to Auvergne, more precisely the region called Bourbonnais, in the Allier department. Nothing to do with bourbon though. It is truly in the middle of Nowhere, and we joined a group of a dozen friends for a week in an old, 1800s house. The week was put under the sign of the holy barbecue, so we grilled and smoked copious amounts of delicious meat. We also played darts. I suck at darts. I’m way better at grilling meat and drinking beers. But I’ll still give it a go. A visit to a local winemaker I knew was also planned and we ended up staying more than three hours with him, covering the whole production, from the vineyard to the bottle, even leaving with some well-aged magnums!
We then had to come back to Paris before starting the proper road trip - and for a very good reason; AC/DC were in town! I had seen them twice already, but the Mrs hadn’t, and I wasn’t gonna let this stay like that. The Scottish/Australian quintet is doing fine, friends. 30°C heat and they still managed to put out more than two hours of old school rock’n’roll. Let there be rock was elongated by a fifteen minute long guitar solo from Angus, just like twenty years ago when he was only 50!
The morning after that we descended upon Angers and the Loire valley, visiting friends, and a cheese producer near Nantes the following day. You see, Mrs Fife sells cheese for a living, so the trip was carefully planned so that we could visit some cheese and wine makers along the way. Nicolas received us as well as could be in his little farm where he raises a small herd of 30 Pie Noire cows - a race that was saved from extinction because of low milk yields: thanks to people like him. We ended up staying for four hours, witnessing the entire cheese production and talking about the challenges of being a small, quality-focused farmer in 2025.
The next stop was in Saintes, next to Cognac. We just stayed long enough to visit the Grosperrin warehouse and headquarters, where they age and bottle their single cask and small cask cognacs. We ended up tasting cognacs straight from the cask (and demijohn), from venerable vintages such as 1993, 1969, 1949 and even 1939. Quite a magical experience, especially at 10am in the morning. Needless to say, a bottle was shoved in the trunk of the car.
After a quick stop in Bordeaux amidst a brutal, 40+°C heatwave - rendering a dip in the sea at Lacanau mandatory - we headed to Dordogne, to spend a couple of days at a friend’s house. This particular friend happens to be a professional glassblower. Great fun was had, and attempts at making a somewhat decent tumbler were made.
Down south again, to spend some time in the Béarn region with family near the city of Pau. A stop at a Jurançon winemaker (Domaine Castéra - highly recommended) and an Ossau-Iraty cheesemonger (Ilharreborda - also highly recommended) later, and we were off to join my parents in the high Pyrénées mountains, near Bagnères-de-Bigorre. Nothing like going to the mountains in the summer. This place is stellar, and they make the best aged ham in the world, Jambon de Porc Noir de Bigorre.
We then had to slowly make our way back up North, to come back home, almost 1000km away. A quick stop in the gorgeous city of Albi to see one of Mrs Fife’s cousins, another in Bourges, and back home we were. Close to 3000km driven across the South-Western part of France.
We ate way too much, drank a little too much, not while driving mind you, and stumbled upon places of unrivalled beauty. That’s one of the reasons I love my country. You can find something beautiful pretty much anywhere you go, yet drive 100km and everything will feel vastly different: the climate, architecture, cuisine, local accent…
This summer break was much needed, and yet I wish it would have lasted a few more weeks.
It hasn’t, and here I am. To keep me going until next year. I need a holiday-themed whisky.
Review
Holyrood 5yo, Fragrant Drops, Fesh bourbon barrel, Distilled October 2019, bottled February 2025, one of 256 bottles, 57.6% ABV
£65 paid and still some availability
I didn’t indulge in too much whisky over this summer break, but rather more in cold beers and the occasional bottle of wine. That’s mainly due to the scorching heat we’ve been experiencing across the country towards the middle of August. I drink way more whisky when I go on holidays in Scotland though, and that’s where this bottle came from.
I bought it during the first edition of the Independent Spirits Festival earlier this year. As a sidenote, you can still buy your tickets for the next edition, next March. I’ll be there if everything goes to plan, and I hope to be able to share a dram with you then.
Score: 7/10
Very Good Indeed.
TL;DR
Fruity, ferment-y goodness
Nose
Unique! Malty, somewhat floral, hard candy. Herbal as well. Very fresh and zingy, which I like. Truly summery with fermenting tropical fruits. Really unlike any other Scottish malt. Orange juice.
With water: more vegetal, with celery and mint. Dried pear flakes. Strawberry yoghurt. All sorts of spring flowers.
Palate
Bam! Fruity, apple candy, lychee, really tropical with impressive length. Again those tropical, ferment-y types of fruits, pineapple, mango, even maybe some durian?!
With water: maltier, with porridge and dry bread.
The Dregs
If ever there was a fragrant drop, it’s this one! I love how utterly unique this is. Rachel from FD was interrogated concerning the provenance of this cask and they have no idea which type of yeast and malt was used. It seems neither Fragrant Drops nor current Holyrood distillery staff are sure. She said it was the 35th cask ever filled by Holyrood, so an example of very early production runs. Very cool.
I’m fairly confident in saying that this was not fermented for 72 hours using distillers MG+. There’s some kind of wine or beer yeast used here for sure. Fermentation is where it’s at for me, it’s where all the flavours are created. I love having this bottle around when I need something different or especially to mess with fellow whisky pals when serving this to them blind.
Anyway, let’s finish up by defying the end of the holidays with something from the late Townes Van Zandt; his song Tecumseh Valley. A recent discovery for me, and the perfect artist to put on shuffle while on any road trip.
Score: 7/10
Tried this? Share your thoughts in the comments below. AF
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