An excellently named (we should start charging royalties) Glen Grant that’s spent 22 years in a refill ex-bourbon hogshead. A huge ABV for over two decades of maturation – hmmm. View SMWS
Nose: Delicate stuff. Orchard fruits (apples and pears) alongside lime marmalade and gooseberries. Chopped almonds are joined by buttered sour dough loaf and some chalky minerality. Water takes things herbal with bay leaf, bouquet garni and pot pourri.
Taste: Dainty again, but rather classic at the same time. Baked apples, wine gums and lemon cough sweets combine with sour dough bread, almond oil and austere lemony polish. Development introduces menthol and camphor as well as a soft minerality – water-logged limestone – before heading back to the bake house with digestive biscuits and fluffy pancakes. Reduction is rather the joy, emphasising sweet tinned fruits – apples, pineapples – as well as cask char and baking soda.
Finish: Medium to long with pine sap, lemon oils and crushed tree bark.
On the one hand I’d expect and want more aroma and flavour impact from the Glen Grant – on the other, the subtleties are all rather delightful. Gentle, tantalizing fruits are well mingled with drowsy oak, resulting in something rather shy, but at the same time ascetic. Given the name I want to like this more than I do, but as it stands, there’s just a little much restraint here. Nevertheless, this is still rather delicious and quite tough to score so we’ll go….