Glen Garioch 11yo Amontillado
Cadenhead’s Warehouse Bottling | 58% ABV
Seize the Geery with Both Hands
Broddy, Broddy, Broddy.What are we to do?
Two Geery stinkers in a row?! It’s not enough that you live in the place where whisky costs exorbitant amounts compared to the motherland’s already exorbitant inflation, but to then realise the whisky you’ve found is like a peanut you picked off the floor and ate…that wasn’t a peanut? Not ideal.
Truth be told it’s something I reckon a lot of dedicated brand followers fear, and something I’m just waiting to happen with Ardnamurchan or Glen Garioch. Only, it already has happened with Glen Garioch for me, and like Broddy, twice now.
Both experiences were neatly tied up in a twofer, but the biggest let down was the Berry Bros. & Rudd bottling that cost £95 and presented much like a Glen Garioch would, if it had been matured in bourbon and thrown into a rank sherry cask for a “finishing”. The whisky was initially quite remarkably rubbish, but after months of it settling was able to redeem itself into a 6/10. Geery is better than that.
Heading to the Wee Toon on our annual Whisky Dash, my Uncle and I ruminated upon what casks we might enjoy in the Cadenhead’s Warehouse Tasting tour. A few years ago we had a smorgasbord of casks to unpick, from a creamy Glen Elgin to a stonkin’ Ardmore, a hot Ben Nevis in Manzanilla and a luscious 31yo Cameronbridge that I wish I'd bought. What treats might await us, we wondered.
On the day it was a bit of a tour of Speyside, with the first two not really knocking any socks off, and the third starting to get the eyebrows wibbling. But the fourth was revealed to be a Glen Garioch and I stood up from my resting position, in readiness for what would surely be the best of the bunch. How could it not be - Glen Garioch fresh from the cask!? Oh wait, it’s finished in Amontillado…
Could this be the one?
It could go two ways, my now apprehensive brain said: either it’ll be another Berry Bros let down, or it’ll be what the Berry Bros should have been - delicately and purposefully curated to enhance the underlying Geery magic. As Aly poured a measure into quivering glass, the first smell to reach my flared nostrils was spectacular - massive Geery character - purple, malty, bready magic, but with an extra ping of redness.
First sip confirmed it. Oh boy. My uncle and I both shot wide-eyed looks at each other, and hummed in unison to the music of the Geery. Inside that brick cell, this whisky landed like an A400M complete Tom Cruise flapping alongside it. All action. All weight. All robustness and gravity defying. This Geery would be coming home with me.
From the remaining two whiskies on the Warehouse Tour, the Geery remained top billing by a country mile. The Craigellachie was dark and alluring, and we picked one of those up to split too, and the Staoisha was Staoisha in the middle - nothing like the bacon firework of the Fife Whisky Festival 2023 Staoisha, that’s for sure.
Our Whisky Dash 2024 ended at the Cadenhead’s Shoppe, where we both picked up a 200ml bottle of a Glen Garioch in a re-racked White Port cask. We opened Uncle’s bottle on the boat and it was magic too, and wished I’d just done the usual thing and picked up a 70cl bottle. But it too could have been a stinker, so the mini bottles worked a treat!
Review
Glen Garioch 11yo, Bottled from Cask in Campbeltown, Amontillado Sherry Hogshead for 4 years - 2012 Distilled, 58% ABV
£60 - might still be available on the tour
Home again to the Misty Isle and with a throaty cold dispatched, I’m opening the Warehouse Tasting bottle with high expectations. Very high expectations in fact, because of how remarkable it had been in the warehouse. I’m very much aiming for an Adelphi Glen Garioch 11yo level of experience. To the races we go.
Nose
Bready pudding. Chocolate Chips. Hint of chamomile. Hint of butter. Purple new car smell. Hot tarmac. Wee bit damp wood. Damp grass. Salted caramel. Thick. Big red cedar. Red laces. Iced brioche. Maple Syrup.
Palate
Big purple. Big sweet spices. Hot. Rubber. Syrup. Sweet cedar wood. Warm. Funky note - sour/smelly socks. Petrichor. Rainy evening breeze. Sweet magazines. Bonbons - strawberry. Icing sugar, powdery. Natural yogurt. Rice cracker at the death.
The Dregs
Well once again I’m blown away by the way Geery makes me smile from ear to ear.
Isn’t it amazing that flavour - through olfactory inhaling and swirly tongue wagging - can make us feel happy. It can energise the amygdala and stimulate a response that forces the vocal cords transmit an unsolicited, resonant “WOW”. Geery does that to me.
This Geery certainly does it to me. It’s very much in-line with some of the best Geery experiences around, but this one has a few things that stop it from reaching the upper echelons of something like the Adelphi 11yo stratofortress. Where the Adelphi AD/Venturers bottle comes swinging from the golden rooftops with a butter bullet, this Warehouse Tasting brings a bit of catchy red heat.
When the spice has finished blasting the Geery character emerges, red-cheeked but still glowing purple, tan and a bit of lime green too. It’s got the buttery pud thing but it feels a bit more raw. Also at full speed there’s a very slight ming eggy note that reminds me of the BB&R shocker, all sour and frowny. But just a hint. Never enough to escalate into something sinister.
Which is why this is redeemed. It has a load of things going on, from sweet, sugary heather to souring, zingy lime, past bread and buttery pudding and back into the red heat of sherry. Throughout the dramming experience it remains potently enjoyable, not giving too much of anything to make it uniform. It needs water to steam off that heat, but when you get it just right - a drop or two is fine - it comes alive and suddenly it’s singing time.
The complications arriveswhen it’s compared back to back with the Adelphi 11yo. Just when I think Geery can’t be much better than the Warehouse Tasting cask, and that surely it’s giving all that Geery can, the Adelphi barges in with that butter baseball bat and adjusts my frame of reference once again. That’s astonishing whisky, and with a turn back to the Warehouse Tasting bottle, it definitely isn’t as swoon worthy.
But it’s still joyous whisky. Outstanding whisky that, when the price is taken into account, blows my mind to think of the money I’ve wasted on mediocre whisky (or fiddled Geery for £95) when Cadenhead’s are putting out stuff like this for £60. If I lived closer to Campbeltown I’d be in that warehouse every time they rotated casks, mining those seams for gems like these.
This is an 8/10 all day long, mirroring the White Port bottle and adding one more glowing purple tick to the Geery love box. Broddy old pal, I hope you find something Geery shaped and super that will bring you back into the fold. There’s untold Geery treasures awaiting us out there, hiding in plain sight. There might be a few duffers from folk fiddling for fiscal gain, but pick wisely and dreams will come true.
Score: 8/10
Tried this? Share your thoughts in the comments below. DC