Scotch Whisky Review #146: The Whisky Exchange “A Fine Christmas Malt” Glenfarclas 17 Year (2018)

Image Credit to The Whiskeyphiles

Distillery: An unnamed family owned distillery in Speyside (aka Glenfarclas)

Region: Speyside

Price: $8 for 2 oz

Cask Type: Ex-Sherry Casks

ABV: 58.7%

Age: 17 Year

Color: 1.3, Amber.

Merry Christmas! I hope that you and your loved ones are able to have a wonderful holiday season together! This is the twenty-fifth and last in my Countdown to Christmas series. You can find the entire series here. Thank you for reading!

From the bottle:

For the nights before Christmas,

when snug in your house,

Or, carefully wrapped,

‘neath the tree for your spouse.

A Christmas Malt

that’s been selected with care,

From a Speyside distillery,

though we can’t tell you where.

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Nose: On the sweeter side of things. It starts off with a nice whiff of graham crackers followed by honey and chocolate-covered raisins. There’s also something a bit leathery which is pleasant.

Palate: It’s a bit on the hot side reminding me a lot of another high strength whisky from a family owned distillery in Speyside, the Glenfarclas 105, and it really needs a little bit of water to cool it down. There’s a lot of dessert notes packed into this. It starts with some chocolate-covered raisins followed by caramel. Some rum raisin cake pops up afterwards along with a lovely warm currant scone. Towards the end, there’s a fantastic note of overripe plums.

Finish: Far, far shorter than it ought to be. There’s some more of the sweet plums and the tiniest trace of sulphur.

Conclusion: Merry Christmas! I can’t believe that time has flown by so quickly, it feels like yesterday that I was sitting down to start on the first of this series. I really, really appreciate everyone who has read through my posts and I hope that you have enjoyed them. I can’t think of a more appropriate dram to finish this series off on. This Glenfarclas is absolutely delightful and is really a medley of a bunch of holiday desserts. It definitely packs a punch though and deserves to be watered down a lot. Overall, a delightful dram. Would I buy a bottle? If there were any more left, yes.

Final Score: 83.

Scotch & Sheen is now on Instagram! Please take a look for quick summaries of my reviews!

Scotch Whisky Review #146, Speyside Review #61, Whisky Network Review #194

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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.