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The nose picked up pleasant sweetness (barley sugars, brownie, tinned fruit salad) and clean notes of freshly ironed laundry, expensive new carpets and soft leather gloves. The palate combined orange blossom honey and marmalade with caramelised almonds, marzipan and apricot iced tea; finishing with fennel, eucalyptus and tart fruit skins. The reduced nose had apple blossoms falling on waxed jackets, rhubarb rock, sherbet lemons and tinned lychees. All of this synthesised into a palate of fruit candies, nougat, stewed apple (with clove) and tea tree oil. After 12 years in ex-bourbon wood we transferred this into a second fill Limousin oak hogshead.
About SMWS
The Scotch Malt Whisky Society was founded in Edinburgh in 1983 by Phillip 'Pip' Hills who, while travelling around Scotland in the 1970s, fell in love with whiskies drawn straight from the cask. After he expanded his syndicate the Society was purchased by Glenmorangie PLC in 2004. In 2015, the Society was sold back to private investors. In June 2021, the private owners floated the holding company The Artisanal Spirits Company plc on the Alternative Investment Market of the London Stock Exchange.
It has a unique code system where the first number refers to the distillery and the second refers to the cask from which the bottle comes. SMWS also offers the largest range of distilleries of any independent bottler. These curiously named drams really do have something for every whisky lover!
The SMWS are one of the Britain's most revered independent bottlers with a worldwide network of partner bars with one mission of getting as much whisky at natural cask strength without water to different nations including USA, Canada, Switzerland, UK, Austria, Germany and many others.
These older labels from the first runs are mostly with distillation methods that include direct heat which was replaced with steam for many distilleries for environmental reasons changing the taste of whisky forever. It'll get real interesting when nuclear fusion is used to distil whisky. We might glow green for a few weeks after we drink the stuff. Who knows.... but all we know is that the old stuff has a musky taste that is VERY welcomed by people nowadays trying to time travel through whisky's past.
About Glen Elgin
Fruitiness is the key to Glen Elgin’s character – a lush fruitiness at that – which is achieved through clear wort, long fermentation and slow distillation in its six stills to clean out sulphur, but then condensing takes place in worm tubs which adds weight and complexity. Complicated stuff.
Little surprise perhaps that Glen Elgin has been a major contributor to blends, White Horse in particular (there was a legendary 12-year-old exclusive for Japan which heavily promoted the White Horse link on the label). It was a member of Diageo’s ‘Hidden Malts’ range which appeared, briefly, at the start of the Millennium before being dropped in favour of the higher-volume Singleton family. As a result, it remains a minor cult among malt aficionados and is revered by blenders.
Located in the strangely-named hamlet of Fogwatt, Glen Elgin’s early years were somewhat precarious. It started production in 1900 just as whisky was entering one of its periodic slumps and promptly was mothballed twice before being sold in 1906. It joined DCL in 1929 and was licensed to White Horse Distillers. Electricity only arrived at the distillery in 1950. Up until then it was operated by paraffin.