Let’s kick things off with a Macallan bitchfest, which I will try to keep brief. I have described Macallan this way: if you want to impress someone throwing a party on a boat, the upper-end products from that distillery are a good way to do it. The price they ask for the whisky they deliver borders on highway robbery, of course, but it’s the Scotch people most identify with luxury and overall fanciness.
I will re-iterate that whenever I have had the occasion to meet someone I think really knows what he or she’s talking about in the world of spirits, and assuming I talk to them long enough for the subject to come up, almost unequivocally it turns out that not only do we think Macallan is a ripoff, but it turns out that we don’t actually like Macallan 12, the vanguard of the distillery and most of the lay public’s first introduction into what sherried whisky is all about.
At this point, someone might say, “Well, okay, Mister Smartypants. If you think Macallan 12 is swill, then what are you drinking?” And, in that context, I can point to Glendronach 12 as a more affordable and out-and-out better bottle that can be found in most places with a half-decent selection.
“With the Glendronach 12, the distillery puts their money where their mouth is when it comes to embracing all that sherry has to offer.”
First, a little about sherried whiskey, and specifically sherried scotch. (Experts, feel free to ignore this paragraph, but I think newcomers will find it valuable.) It’s an uphill battle to convince a lot of laypeople that all scotch isn’t necessarily smoky as a non-negotiable. That, of course, is the result of peat, specifically, which you won’t find here. Instead, the Glendronach 12 is a very representative member of an entirely different archetype of scotch, which looks to sherry casks to provide a variety of fruity, rich secondary flavors. No ashtray flavors here. No iodine, either, which produces what two separate friends of mine have described as “smokey band aids.”
To understand what Glendronach has to offer, here’s a big one: they put their money where their mouth is when it comes to embracing all that sherry has to offer. Most of the time, when you read about sherried scotches, you’re going to find that they’re finished in a sherry cask. This means that normally, they have it in an ex-bourbon barrel for most of its life, and then in the last year or two (sometimes even less than that), they dump the juice into a Sherry barrel to just give it that last little bit of depth and fruitiness.
Sometimes, that works out fine. Other times (often times), it tastes like a weak-ass cost savings measure that doesn’t produce any discernible result in your glass. I’d argue it’s the scotch equivalent of a bartender giving your glass a “vermouth rinse” before giving you a shaken martini that’s mostly gin.
I don’t like it, but I understand why it’s the norm. There are fewer drinkers of sherry than ever before, so it’s already rare to get these casks as soon as the sherry is bottled. If you’re just using them to finish a whiskey, you can also get them back onto the market to sell or re-use as a “second fill,” or “third fill” cask, and so on and so forth.
With Glendronach, however, you’re getting a line of whiskies that have sat inside of sherry casks the whole time. On this bottle, the use of the phrase “matured” as opposed to “finished” indicates that Glendronach put their distillate in Pedro Ximenez and Oloroso casks, and they didn’t take it out until they thought it was ready.
As a result, you’re getting what I think are some of the best flavors that sherry has to offer, layered on top of what is already a good, characterful whiskey. Fruit comes across here in a way that’s fresh, vibrant, and so very enticing where the Macallan 12 feels skunky, sour, and flat. There’s also a high degree of chocolatey goodness that comes out thanks to what I think is a good interplay of fruit and a malt-forward character of the base spirit.
There’s a lot going on—and all of it’s good and cohesive. Whiskies like the Glendronach 12 are in a large sense why I drink Scotch. This is a bottle that gives you a litany of great tastes and sense memories that collide into one another in wonderful and unexpected ways.
And good lord, they’re giving us this at a sub-$60 price point? My dad got through a third of the bottle I gifted to him and started rationing it immediately. His tongue was telling him that this stuff was tasty, and tasted expensive. I had to twist his arm to overcome the impulse: the world, implausibly, seemed to be in no danger of running out of it.
Those qualities, again, are what I think lets Glendronach 12 drive a stake through the heart of Macallan 12. Macallan is expensive and immediately forces a conversation of worth and value. Glendronach 12 is affordable, and bowls you over with a slate of flavors you normally need to go significantly upmarket to find. I don’t know how these guys are doing it, but we are absolutely the beneficiaries of their efforts.
To close this review out, I was going to use the phrase “Age is Just a Number,” but boy howdy—that cluster of words certainly hits a little different in the wake of R. Kelly’s trial and conviction. “Yeah, I knew this Glendronach was only 12, but it’s a mature 12,” he stammered, feeling the handcuffs go on. Regardless, you’re getting a huge degree of spirit/wood/sherry interaction going on here, and to my mind that makes Glendronach 12 the whiskey to taste if you want to see if sherried whiskey is at all for you.
