Glenallachie 5 Years Old 2012 Cask #900020 (A.D. Rattray)

Chosen by A.D. Rattray, the Morrison family bottler with its shop in the old village school at Kirkoswald on the Ayrshire coast, this a 5 year old GlenAllachie, distilled in 2012, from cask 900020, at 66.2%, one of 658 bottles. GlenAllachie is a Speyside single malt, revived in 2017 by the team of Billy Walker. It runs unusually long fermentations, up to a hundred and sixty hours, for a thick, ester rich and fruity spirit.

Distilled to a full, generous cut, building a deep malt of dried fruit and dark sugar. Maturation came in an Oloroso cask, layered over the full GlenAllachie make. In these extractive early years the oak gives vanillin as vanilla and lactones as coconut over orchard fruit and a dark sugar. Long ageing turns the fresh notes towards date, prune and a dark, bittersweet chocolate. The wood frames the spirit without ever stripping the full Speyside body.

Bottled at a cask strength 66.2%, it is deep and concentrated. Date, fig and a warm cinnamon, with dried fruit, fig and walnut from the cask. Fig, honey and a dark chocolate fill the middle. A deep finish ends on dried fruit and a dark chocolate. This is the sherry led malt of Aberlour.