Official Bottling | 48% ABV

Score: 7/10

**Very Good Indeed.**
***TL;DR***
*Super core range underdog that, 4 years on, continues to impress.*

Time to rein it in.

The other night I was invited to an evening hosted by the Glasgow School of Art, to discuss the impacts of remoteness on creativity. If, due to the location of the creative, a more complete experience is achievable: a connection to the place, the people or the craft.

Echoing Dave Broom's A Sense of Place, does the environment within which one operates have a direct correlation to one’s creative output? It's an interesting discussion point, and my own experience of living and working on the edge of the world has been nothing short of tectonic.

To feel completely grounded upon this earth permits you to operate from a position of knowing, and being totally resonant, with your inner frequency, and thus able to channel your purest form of expression. Or something. Man. Put the finger cymbals down. Snuff out that incense stick.

I’ve discovered, as I write this now, something called “brown noise”, and it’s currently playing in the background. It's a version of white noise, or black noise, or pink noise… actually any type of noise except green noise, which is very lush and rainforesty. Brown noise is like sitting in an attenuated airplane cabin. It’s low, rumbling and steady.

Intrigued to know what it might do to me, the effect has been immediate. My brain focused on the task at hand. I feel an inner steadiness. It’s really quite strange. Brown noise. Jokes abound. Follow through. That’s the sound of a post-Saturday sesh.

But seriously, get into it. It’s telling that the adding of noise to my environment has relaxed me. Ye can tak the boi oot the central belt, but ye cannae tak the central belt oot the boi.

Buying whisky has become a rare treat for me again. The sine wave of my whisky purchasing has found its trough and is starting to think about rising again. In celebration of the opportunity to buy a wee bottle of whisky, I decided that I wanted to go back to the roots of something that set me off upon a journey of vast, rewarding independent discovery.

It all started with a miniature received at Christmas in 2021, from a most fantastic person; someone who will shortly be departing from my professional life. She’s given so much, and asked for so little; stepping into the joys of retirement will starve us of her irreplaceable personality. This whisky, every time I see it on a shelf, reminds me of her. Yet, since the first bottle bought after the miniature was rinsed in 2022, I’ve not tried it.

Chasing all permutations of a whisky is my jam - it’s my personality. Clingy. Suffocating. Intense. If I find a whisky that resonates, I set off upon a voyage of discovery, to find all variations of that whisky so that I can fully experience everything that a distillery has to offer.

Some distilleries actively prevent an exciter from knowing the truth of their spirit; adding e150a and chill-filtering their whisky to make it easier for casuals to enjoy. To find the purity, we must seek out the backhanders, the independently bottled, low-batch fleeters. It’s a wonderful place to exist too, with so many choices available from so many independent bottlers. You will find something for you, I guarantee it.

Some distilleries, however, are the reference. The definitive character of that place: Ardnamurchan are my template when it comes to knowing their whisky and releasing a myriad of interesting, uncompromising iterations. If it’s looking a bit shoogly, a bit underwhelming, it doesn’t leave the blending room.

Their core range is the embodiment of coastal, half-n-half smoky whisky for me, and coming back to their core range is like coming home and reminding myself why I love Ardnamurchan so much.

Glen Garioch is a weird one. It’s the underdog of whiskies, the thing a lot of people shout about, but few latch on to. Strange lights. When I first found Glen Garioch and my face tightened into a barbaric grin I was keen to not say anything at all, for fear of everyone finding out. Mind you, it was peak land-grab time, whisky was flying off shelves and if you weren’t fast, you were cast into a barren desert of FOMO.

Yet since then, their whisky has remained easy to find, purchase and enjoy. I’ve spent the intervening years seeking out all expressions, and even turned Uncle Foosty onto its charming ways. He’s now a devoted follower and, I’d argue, is even more experienced than I am with the Geery. My gift to the world is a Foosty passionate about Glen Garioch; he’s even been badgering Woody Tan of Woodrow’s to release their own cask of it. Watch this space.

It follows that, when a journey is undertaken to uncover all the myriad expressions available for a distillery through independent routes mostly, there comes a point where there’s so much to reference, so many places of memory recall, so many bottles in the bank, that the unique experiences become rarer to find.

Yet for me, in this case, the rare experience has been returning to the whisky that started the journey, and finding that it’s better than I remembered.

Review

Glen Garioch 12yo, Official bottling, Bourbon & Sherry casks, 48% ABV
£44-ish and available everywhere

I last reviewed a bottle of Glen Garioch 12yo in June 2022, where I said such things as “a moment on the lips, a lifetime on the moobs.” I’ve gotten too serious of late, but the overall sentiment of that review was that it’s a whisky not many speak of, or promote, yet delivers a fantastic experience for the money.

Four years on I decided that it was time I bought whisky for me again, and found the Glen Garioch 12 staring me in the face. When it arrived, I realised I still love the presentation of it. Like a fellow Dramface writer noted, it feels ripe for a rebrand into something ultra minimalist and generic, as seems to be the way these days. I hope they keep it as is: the look and feel of the Glen Garioch branding emits everything that it feels like to be in the Highlands: heather, tartan, earthy, whimsical. It could be sat in a castle and feel as at home as it does in my castle. In fact, it’s likely sat in a proper castle right now, given the old King himsel enjoys the Geery .

Nose

Heathery, purple, earthy, sweet, spicy. Well done loaf of sourdough. Strawberry jam. Butter. I want toast. Milk chocolate. Toffee, rum and raisin.

Palate

Magic time: all the Geery stuff I love - purple, earthy, gorse, toffee, touch of salt, lots of soft oak and sweet red fruit - strawberry again. Spicy, baking and a bit of peppery heat. It’s lovely and textured - milk chocolate again, syrup, delicate but robust at the same time. Moreish. Purple. Purple.

The Dregs

Opening it on a Friday, as the sun disappeared behind the hills setting off a pastel purple march across the roof of the world, I put this whisky to my lips and realised the gross error of my ways. For so many years I’ve held the firm belief that, in order to experience the very best of what a distillery can offer, one must seek out whisky through the independent route. It’s true for a vast number of distilleries. Yet in this instance, the core range remains so decidedly singular to my memory of what Glen Garioch is, that I wonder why I left it for so long. It’s all the purples, and yeasty, and malty, and chocolatey, and heathery notes that originally set my face aflame. It's sublime.

Of note is the ABV, a pleasurably easy and approachable amount. The independent route often means cask strength presentation - unfiltered, unadulterated, unleashed. That’s still my preferred ingesting procedure, but recently I’ve become a bit weary of the aftermath of such high ABV enjoyment. In fact, just recently Foosty sent me a photo of a 15yo Glengoyne bottled by Woodrow’s of Edinburgh, a very low outturn release offered at an astonishingly high 73.2% ABV. He then sent me a sample of it, and I reached for it last night only to snatch my hand away - I have no business drinking such rocket fuel on a Sunday.

Perhaps I need to hydrate more leading up to my tastings, or maybe I need to know when to call it a night - my five years of enthusiastic whisky imbibing has made me foolhardy. But the dreary day after has started to impact my fun; having a 48% whisky that doesn’t demand tinkering, that lands beautifully and squarely, as well as trying harder to keep a lid on my penchant for dram-slicked cupboard raking, has been good for my whisky soul. Two drams, both beautifully finite; tomorrow me thanks me.

But what of the 12yo - a whisky that’s non-chill filtered yet coloured? Well, I don’t give no stuffs about colouring - the flavour of the whisky is paramount, and if I had to choose between the two sins of whisky fiddling, I’d always pick colour over stripping of flavour through filtration.

Flavour - it’s here in spades, and giving me everything I could ever want from a whisky enjoyed in the Western Highlands of Scotland. I can hear the faint drone of bagpipes drifting over the fuchsia heather, the smell of gorse and ferns, leather and wood, an earthy, malty resonance. Purple. Purple. It matches the sky as it blazes to its twilight end.

In the facehole it positively slaps. That’s the word, right? Kids? It arrives in a crescendo of sweet, heathery joy, balancing the sweetness with the yeasty malt that some find foosty, others find dusty. I find it completely agreeable, and what's more, quite delicious. There’s a latent spice, an unsighted round-house flying through the crystal fresh air to pierce your earhole. This would be phenomenal paired with a perfectly manifested haggis.

Glen Garioch are in cahoots with tradition, building malt floors and returning to direct fired stills using, for the first time since the 1990s, peated barley. I’m nervous, to tell you the truth. But I’m sure, long before the transitional phase to the new era of Glen Garioch kicks in properly, I’ll have time to buy up as much Glen Garioch 12 from right now, as I can.

It’s wonderful whisky, and well deserving of your attention.

Score: 7/10

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

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