Glen Moray Classic
Official Bottling | 40% ABV
Score: 5/10
Average. In a good way.
TL;DR
Worthy of a purchase, despite the score
Make it darker! And cheaper!
There are people working at the big corporate whisky producers who decide that whisky should have E150 caramel colourant added to it.
I have an image in my head of what those people must be like. I imagine they are the sort of people who ask “Why?” when someone asks where the bathroom is.
The sort of people who turn off the light when they leave a room with others still inside. I also imagine they wave at people who missed the train. They hand their coats to people who extend an arm to greet them and I bet they say “After me” to people when passing through a doorway.
I’m sorry, does that come across as me being a bit petulant and childish? Well, poop. So be it.
I don’t want to go into this subject too deeply. We talk about the woes and worries of E150 caramel colouring and chill filtration in malt whisky often enough and it can feel like figuratively flogging a proverbially dead horse. Or something.
But I think whisky, especially malt whisky, should not be allowed to have industrial E150 caramel colouring added to it. We could go into the atrocity of producers not being required to state that they use it in some countries, even though it’s a separate ingredient that is being added to something designed to be consumed, but let’s not. You’ll have heard the gripes we have with it from plenty of enthusiasts both online and offline, so I’m going to skip that for now.
I made a pact with myself last year: I would no longer be buying whiskies that weren’t naturally presented. If it didn’t meet the criteria of being non-chill filtered and natural colour there wouldn’t be a place for it on my shelves. Why would I spend money on something that I’m actively opposed to?
And yet, here we are.
Review
Glen Moray, Our Classic, Official bottling, available everywhere, 40% ABV
€16 paid (£14) usually around €24, always available
I bought this bottle for €15,95. Yes, you read that right. €15,95 for a bottle of Scotch Single Malt Whisky. That is about £13.75-ish.
Some quick browsing online suggests that it usually retails for about €21 to €28, but I bought this at an online retailer that was having discounts on all things Glen Moray sometime in May.
In my market that regular RRP means it slots neatly in between JW’s Red Label and Black Label, for reference. But now, with this discount, I acquired this bottle of Single Malt for less than what I’d usually have to put down for a JW Red Label or some other absolute bottom shelf blend. I suddenly remembered Ralfy reviewing it a year or two ago and him speaking kindly about it.
And so, despite my passionate pledge to myself to not buy another bottle of overly diluted, artificially coloured whisky, it was added to the basket. For €15,95 the worst-case scenario was that it’d be a disappointing bottle of ‘Glen Beige’ and I’d have something to put in a highball this summer.
Except that wasn’t the case.
Score: 5/10
Average. In a good way.
TL;DR
Worthy of a purchase, despite the score
Nose
Malty. Very vanilla. A slight minty note. Citrus mix. Orange pith, grapefruit pith, citrus oil. Simple, but pleasant.
Palate
Sweet malt. Soft, but a bit of prickly liveliness betrays its youth, even at this low ABV. Lemon pith. Mildly tart. The arrival is swift but enjoyable, and the development into the admittedly short finish is where it turns from that sweet, slight confectionery vanilla into a slightly bitter grapefruit or orange pith note. Some unspecified but pleasant citrus plays throughout
The Dregs
What a surprise this little whisky is. It caught me off guard in the best way possible.
Naturally I got it way cheaper than any decent bottle of malt whisky should cost, and that in itself is therefore not a good thing, but even if I had paid regular RRP for this, I wouldn’t have been disappointed. At that price it would be firmly in the ball park of JW Black Label, Monkey Shoulder, the cheaper Glenlivets and Singletons 12yo. In my personal opinion, it'll wipe the floor with those any day of the week and twice on a Sunday.
I have also tried it alongside Glenmorangie 10yo and Glenfiddich 12yo. It holds its own quite well against those, even if they retail for about €37 or higher. Once again, this usually retails at least €10 dearer. The Glenfiddich is a bit rounder, “smoother” dare I say, and the Glenmorangie delivers a maltier, more mellow backbone. Both feel a bit more mature yet more linear than this does.
This non-age stated Glen Moray, although more youthful and spirit-forward compared to those, also feels like a more interesting whisky. It has a sharper hook to it, and it’s not any worse for it. The spirit seems a bit more robust than you’d initially give it credit for at this strength. It’s plucky is what it is. I like that.
It reminds me of when I was watching this year’s Nürburgring 24-Hour Race a while back, which featured a trusty sight for racing enthusiasts. There on the grid in the middle of all those high-octane Porsches, Ferraris, AMG’s, Aston Martins, and other track-honed barnstormers stood a stripped out, front wheel-drive Dacia Logan with a roll cage and a rear wing. The sort of car with about as much racing pedigree as your grandfather’s hearing aid, and often seen in the same colour as well.
Everyone following the race was rooting for that little thing. Not for it to win - let’s be realistic here. Just for it to keep tearing about and finish the full 24 hours. Social media, the YouTube live stream; it didn’t matter where you were watching. Whenever the camera moved away from Max Verstappen battling the established order of GT3 drivers, and that blue-green soap box came into shot, the comment section blew up with adoration and praise for that little Dacia.
That’s what this Glen Moray feels like when I see it sitting with the rest of my collection. Humble. Plucky. Just happy to be there and have a good time.
It’s good for sharing in a social context, it works in a cocktail, and it’s a fine citrusy summer sipper when the temperatures make you shy away from high ABV heavyweights. It’s also perfect as a calibrator to start the night with before moving into some more demanding stuff.
Do you know what else it’s good for? Blending up! It’s a perfect base for experimenting with ways to elevate the experience. It works especially well if whatever you’re blending it with has a higher ABV. Right now I’ve blended it up in sample bottles with the following splits, in which the bigger number is the Glen Moray base part:
A: 80/20 with some North British 17yo.
C: 60/40 with Ardnamurchan Golden Promise.
K: 70/30 with 7yo Edradour No.2 Inaugural.
L: 90/10 with 7yo Caol Ila from refill barrels.
V: 85/15 with Glenallachie 10yo batch 11.
Z: 60/40 with Springbank 100 Proof 5yo.
It’s great fun and up until now the results have all been interesting.
I imagine the margins on this for La Matiniquaise are razor thin at RRP, and that with the discount I had they might be breaking even or maybe losing some money just to get some stock moving out the door in these challenging times. Stack ‘em high, sell ‘em cheap. We don’t like Single Malt Whisky being treated this way, but in that category this is one of your best options.
As positive as I am about this whisky, my praise shouldn’t be pulled out of context too much. It remains presented at 40%, coloured, and chill filtered, so in the grand scheme of all things available it does only receive a 5 out of 10. Mind you, a 5 out of 10 on Dramface means average, in a good way. And in the realm of bottles that deserve a 5 out of 10 this really is in the upper quartile. I was very close to awarding this a 6 out of 10, simply because of how it keeps hilariously over-achieving compared to its competitors.
Once again the context of the score is to be found in the words rather than just the mark. I think that if Glen Moray would bring out a naturally presented, higher ABV version of this, it would very easily reach a higher mark.
One more thing: why is it that the cork on this cheap bottle of budget whisky is thick, solid and seals properly, while corks from some more premium producers are too soft and fit so loosely? You want names? Bunnahabhain, Arran, Glen Scotia, and even sometimes Signatory Vintage’s corks for their standard tall round bottles.
It’s a little whinge, this, but an important one. I cannot tell you how many corks of those producers I’ve had to replace with decent ones and I know for a fact I’m not the only one. It really cannot be that difficult. It just isn’t. Room for improvement for some of the big boys.
Now then; off I go to find some independently bottled Glen Moray.
Score: 5/10
Tried this? Share your thoughts in the comments below. MM
-
Dramface is free.
Its fierce independence and community-focused content is funded by that same community. We don’t do ads, sponsorships or paid-for content. If you like what we do you can support us by becoming a Dramface member for the price of a magazine.
However, if you’ve found a particular article valuable, you also have the option to make a direct donation to the writer, here: buy me a dram - you’d make their day. Thank you.
For more on Dramface and our funding read our about page here.
What’s your own personal top distilleries?
At the point of this article’s publication, Glen Moray does not currently appear in the Dramface Top 40.
You can influence that vote here!
Other opinions on this:
Got a link to a reliable review? Tell us.
