Glenfarclas Single Cask #3019 9 Years Old 2010 (Oloroso)

A 9 year old Glenfarclas, a distillery bottling, from 2010, cask 3019, at 60.4%, released for a whisky festival. Glenfarclas is a deep, dark Speyside malt of dried fruit, nut and spice. Its slow, cool dunnage maturation loses very little to the angels each year. Direct firing chars the wash a little, lending the rich, nutty depth Glenfarclas is known for. It draws on that deep inventory for the Family Casks, single vintages reaching back to the 1950s.

The spirit was run slowly off the spirit still, for the rich, sherried make Glenfarclas is known for. It was matured in an Oloroso sherry cask, the wood working deep into the malt. In these extractive early years the oak gives vanillin as vanilla and lactones as coconut over orchard fruit and a dark sugar. The full spirit deepens with time, the cask drawing out its darker register. Maturation runs slow and even in the dunnage warehouses at Ballindalloch.

At 60.4%, undiluted, it is dark and full. Baked apple, honey and a dark chocolate, with dried fruit, fig and walnut from the cask. Beneath it run dried fruit, dark sugar and a warm spice. Dried fruit, spice and a soft oak see it out. This is the family sherry malt of Ballindalloch.