Glasgow Distillery Company 5 Year (SMWS 156.1 "West Coast Recipe")

 

The Glasgow Distillery Company is a new lowlands distillery, founded in 2015, and the first in the area since 1902. Interestingly, the distillery offers joint tours with Tennants brewery - I would absolutely do this. According to Wikipedia, they have a reputation for experimentation, so I'm doubly curious about this bottle now. 

This bottles comes from the very first cask they sold to the Scotch Malt Whisky Society ("SMWS"), and is lightly peated and only five years old (!). Presumably triple-distilled. Without much ado, here are the official tasting notes from SMWS: 

We shallow fried our sliver of peat in fine olive oil, then added mushrooms, vanilla and heather honey before covering it with a hessian sack. To the tongue, the dram offered poppyseeds, smoked black tea, salted toffee and baked red apple. Introducing water generated more sweetness and a distinct salinity on the nose; cashew nuts, sursild (Norwegian pickled herring), vanilla frosting and Whitby kippers. Now, the palate gave us sweet tobacco, wet peat and sponge cake, with toffee and cinnamon buns.

Interesting - mushrooms, vanilla, honey? Hessian? Poppy and tea?? Fish?? Well, color me interested. Bottled at 61.1% ABV, let's see what Glasgow (home to my beloved Belle and Sebastian) has to offer the world of single malt scotch:

Nose: Very straightforward peated nose. Indeed there are mushrooms and honey, very delicate notes of tea, and hints of extra-virgin olive oil. A surprisingly soft and delicate nose for a 5 year old. 

Three Weeks Later: I get more out of the nose now. Burlap, wet basement, clay, and ... yes, fish, like smoked kippers. 

Mouthfeel: Thick and chewy. 

Palate: Initially hot with alcohol - a big hot wave sweeps across the tongue at first. Then, a comparatively rich palate emerges: tea, toffee, smoke, honey, wood, salt. Nothing outstanding, but everything integrated and in the right place. It's pleasant without being exceptional. Give it more time, and you get wet shag tobacco, vanilla frosting, and some cinnamon. The official notes are pretty close, I just don't taste the fish. 

Three Weeks Later: It's more complex now: mushrooms, honey, red wine (?!), spent tea leaves, caramel, coffee grounds, smoke, wood chips, and lots of salt. Some chocolate and some herbal character as well. 

Finish: Medium in length, with smoke, cashews, and honey. Simple, but satisfying. 

Verdict: This is a hard one to judge. It's certainly pleasant to drink - it does nothing wrong - but it isn't exactly winning any awards in my book either. I'll say that for a 5 year peated whisky, it's quite mild - cooling tobacco, tea, nuts, salt, honey, herbs, spices, but nothing brash, nothing offensive at all. Good stuff, but I admit to being very curious how this cask would have done being bottled at 10-12 years, or even older. That said, it shows good promise for the Glasgow Distillery Company, and I would not be unhappy ordering this in a bar somewhere.