Scotch Whisky Review #135: Glenfarclas 17 Year

Distillery: Glenfarclas

Region: Speyside

Price: Sample courtesy of /u/d333bs

Cask Type: Mixture of sherry casks, including first fill Oloroso

ABV: 43%

Age: 17 year

Color: 0.8, Deep Gold.

This is the fifteenth in my Countdown to Christmas series where I’ll be posting a review a day until Christmas. You can find the entire series here.

*Nose: * It’s really, really sweet. You get a big whiff of sherry accompanied by apples, orange zest, and simple syrup. Very inviting.

Palate: This is on the sweeter side of things but not as sweet as the nose suggests it would be. The sherry expresses itself in a slightly creamy manner. It’s accompanied by some cinnamon and warm apple cider/apple pie filling.

Finish: Medium to short in length. More of the warm apple pie filling is here with cinnamon notes to boot.

Conclusion: This is yet another very straightforward but well-made sherried expression from Glenfarclas. It starts off in the nose with a large helping of sherry there. The palate has some more sherry along with a lovely apple pie filling note. The finish is solid with more the same. It’s a bit of a one note wonder, even having a little more of the orange notes elsewhere would’ve made this a little more complex, but it’s absolutely delicious. Would I buy a bottle? Yes.

Final Score: 83.

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Scotch Whisky review #135, Speyside Review #54, Whisky Network Review #181

Scoring Legend:

• 96-100: The perfect dram, nectar of the gods.
• 90-95: Near perfect, there is something truly special about this whisky.
• 85-89: Amazing, will always try to keep a bottle of this in my collection (if feasible).
• 80-84: Very Good, maybe only one minor nitpick about the whisky keeping it here.
• 75-79: Good, quite enjoyable to drink.
• 70-74: Solid, wouldn’t go out of my way to get it.
• 60-69: Meh, still drinkable.
• Below 59: If you have a bottle of this, start cooking with it instead.