I am quite a fan of Glenfarclas, and will nearly always take a chance on an independent expression of their spirit when I can find it. This young 7-year bottling from the Scotch Malt Whisky Society ("SMWS") fit the bill nicely. It's actually the second bottle I've had that follows this casking: 5 years in ex-bourbon, 2 year finish in PX sherry oak. This one is apparently much closer to the "normal" Glenfarclas sherry-forward profile.
Here are the official tasting notes:
The nose was very evocative of Andalusia – orange peel, custard tarts, sandalwood incense, prunes, jamon Serrano, well-danced upon oak, cheroots and leather saddles. The palate had a definite ‘wow’ factor – juicy figs, cherry jam, dark chocolate-coated Brazil nuts, red laces, stem ginger, rum baba and sherry over ice-cream. If anything, the reduced nose was a magic carpet ride to a more Eastern landscape of raisins, honeyed desserts, dates, sherbet and passionfruit. The complex palate had sugar-coated almonds, mulled wine, cinnamon buns, figs and Amarena cherries. After five years in ex-bourbon wood we moved this into a first-fill Spanish oak PX hogshead.
It's obvious that the first-fill PX hogshead was unusually active, since basically every single flavor listed there is sherry-centric; those first five years in the ex-bourbon basically just created a backbone for the sherry to flesh out, I guess.
I love orange peel, sandalwood, prunes, jamon, oak... all of it. I have been in a sherry mood lately, and had a bottle of good Fino over Thanksgiving, so this is really scratching an itch. Glenfarclas's distillate always gets along well with sherry; bottled at 60.1%, let's check this young thing out:
Nose: Oranges, soft sandalwood, baking spices, and sweet vanilla immediately come from the glass. After a bit, raisins, tobacco (wet shag), and perhaps a little bit of leathery nuttiness. Interesting, the original bourbon maturation - only five years of it - is present behind the "veil" of sherry. The resultant mixture comes across something like cognac, or even Armagnac, with the orange-vanilla.
With a few drops of water, orange sherbet emerges, along with vanilla ice cream and sticky figs. Some brown sugar. Some sulfur "meat." Very nice.
Mouthfeel: Pretty chewy and viscous.
Palate: What a big set of flavors this dram has! Almonds, brown sugar, sherry wine, sweet spices, and lots of cherries. And a big, bold sweet of alcohol. More sherry than bourbon, in terms of flavors.
With water, I get chocolate, more cherries, and a sulfurous meatiness that I really like, it adds a nice dimension here. I like both the nose and the palate better with a little water - it gets closer to rounding it out, and it adds a few angles that really help make this enticing.
Strangely, the neck pour on this tasted much older than the rest of the bottle has; I originally would have placed it at 10-12 years old, but the deeper into it I get, the younger and younger it seems. Not knowing it's 7 years old, I might even guess 6 or 5. Brash, hot, not altogether integrated. Actually somewhat unpleasant as leather and brown sugar fight with each other for supremacy.
Finish: Cherries and cherry pits, oak, smoked cinnamon. Medium length. Quite pleasant and warming.
Verdict: I originally liked this quite a bit; but after half a bottle, I no longer did. Ultimately I think the bourbon and sherry influences go to war with each other, with a push-pull dynamic that I ultimately found counterproductive, brash, and unpleasant. The taste thinned out after the neck pour, and it was hot hot hot at 60% - while some whiskies are completely sippable at that strength, this had heaps of pure alcohol from top to bottom, which was also unpleasant. I would chalk this up as a casking failure. I think I'm going to avoid ex-bourbon Glenfarclas bottles from now on.
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