Glenrothes 10 Years Old 2009 Cask #5871 (Adelphi)

Adelphi Selection is the flagship independent bottling range of Adelphi, the Scottish company that revived the historic Glasgow distillery name in the late 1990s and went on to build Ardnamurchan distillery in the West Highlands. The Selection presents single casks at natural strength under direct cask number identification. This Glenrothes 10 Years Old, distilled in 2009 and bottled in 2020 from cask 5871 at a sustained 65.5%, runs to 508 bottles released into the Netherlands market.

Ten years in a single Oloroso cask at sustained 65.5% delivers concentrated cask interaction at the young end of sherry maturation. The cask sat in lower humidity warehousing favouring water rather than alcohol evaporation, keeping the spirit at high strength. European oak's tannin contribution presses through aggressively at this abv, while the cask's residual oxidised sherry combines with lignin's vanillin and syringaldehyde extractions. The youthful age window keeps the spirit's natural Speyside ester chemistry framed beneath the cask layer.

On the nose, dried fruit and sherried sweetness sit with cooked fruit underneath, a cooked vegetable depth and leafy menthol coolness threading through the cask's chemistry. The palate runs concentrated at 65.5%: fig, raisin and dark chocolate, with European oak's grip pressing through hard. Cocoa nib bitterness emerges mid palate. The finish is long, tannic and resinous, the cask in active extraction with no slack in the wood's contribution.