Glen Keith 40 Year Old Malts of Scotland

Glen Keith’s official bottles are few and, like the 10 Year Old, rather uninteresting. The stocks are still being used for Passport, Chivas Regal and 100 Pipers. The real gems – and Glen Keith has more than its fair share of those – are to be found with the Indies. This 40 Year Old from 1970 (my year of birth!) could well be one of those.

KaBOOM! Who dropped that fruit bomb? Pineapple, apricots, apple, mango, peach, pear, orange… I could go on. And all the fruit is soaked with acacia honey. Some nuts, flowers, mint and vanilla to make this nose complete. Happy time! With this kind of nose, you are already in a festive mood.

(some twenty minutes later…)

The palate is more of the same, upholstered with lime tree tea and some oak (hey, this stuff slept in an oak cask longer than I’ve been roaming this planet, what did you expect?), pepper and grapefruit. Sweet versus bitter? No. Sweet & Bitter Incorporated. Oooh, this redefines the word ‘balance’.

The finish lingers on tropical fruit and spices, but is still too short to my taste (doh!).

I think (or maybe that should be hope) that this spirit was triple distilled as was the custom at Glen Keith until 1970, because it’s so alive after 40 years… Calling this one ‘good’ or ‘very nice’ is doing it injustice. ‘Fruity’ doesn’t even come close to describing this 40 Year Old whisky. This is truly glorious whisky. Uisge Gloriosus! It may take a hefty bite out of your whisky budget (about 200 EUR), but you do not want to miss out on this one.

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