An Exceptional Single-Cask Exclusive for Fans of Glenfiddich

1997 Hector Macbeth (Glenfiddich) 23 Year Old “Hepburn’s Choice” K&L Exclusive

Single Sherry Butt Finish Cask Strength Blended Malt Scotch Whisky (750ml) (Pre-Arrival) ($119.99)

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If you are a fan of the Sherry-finished expressions from Glenfiddich, then you must give this new single cask exclusive a spin. Among the finest “teaspooned” drams we’ve encountered this year, this 23 Year bottling is hauntingly seductive and is one of those single malts you find yourself coming back to again and again. Gorgeously appointed, this full-proof rendition offers all the range and complexity one hopes for in an aged, sherry-finished Scotch. While there’s no doubting its potency, this single malt is, as we’ve come to expect from Hector Macbeth, well-balanced and pure. Being a teaspooned bottling means we can offer this 23 Year Old for a sliver of what one would expect. So not only is it a world-class bottling of Scotch, but it’s a screaming value to boot. Available on pre-arrival, now is the optimal time to secure your bottles.

1997 Hector Macbeth (Glenfiddich) 23 Year Old “Hepburn’s Choice” K&L Exclusive Single Sherry Butt Finish Cask Strength Blended Malt Scotch Whisky (750ml) (Pre-Arrival) ($119.99) —This product is expected to arrive for shipment or pickup by late November 2020.

One of the original teaspooned malts here at K&L that longtime customers may already be familiar with is Hector Macbeth. While nearly all of this year’s blended malts had another distiller’s spirit dropped into it right before bottling, this was teaspooned at the time of production by the original maker with the intention of being sold off to the independent market. This is really how teaspooning came to be a thing in the first place. Blue chip distilleries, like Glenfiddich in this case, don’t want a bunch of people trading on their name. They do, however, still want to sell casks into the blending market to raise quick cash. While we don’t know what they put into the cask in this case (although our money is on the sister distillery next door—Balvenie) we do know that it tastes just like you’d expect sherry finished Glenfiddich at cask strength to taste. If you’ve ever had the excellent Glenfiddich 15 Year Sherry Solera bottling and thought, “I wish this was full proof,” this is the malt for you. The extra eight years of aging doesn’t hurt either.

David Othenin-Girard | K&L Staff Member | Review Date: October 30, 2020

The excellent Hector Macbeth has now become a staple on our shelves each year. It keeps getting older and more delicious, but we’ve managed to keep the price more or less the same. This year, things are a bit different. We started with the same well aged famous Speyside (teaspooned at birth), two of the standard hogsheads’ worth. We dumped those two barrels into a sherry butt. Now this wasn’t any old sherry butt. Typically, when Scotch producers finish their products, they’ll use what are called “seasoned” sherry casks. These are created expressly for use in Scotch production and include the minimum required aging in Jerez before being dumped and shipped to Scotland. It is truly the cask that is the commodity in this system. But in this case, the Laings used an ex-sherry butt that previously held unpeated single malt for many years. The whisky spent three full years maturing in this gorgeous old barrel. This is pretty unusual for finishing and while it doesn’t impart the same fresh wine flavors as the seasoned casks, there’s still plenty of life in this old butt. The resulting whisky is less a finish and more a secondary maturation. Jim McEwan would have called it ACE’d, (additional cask enhancement) in his Murray McDavid, which he reserved for products finished for longer than a year typically. This was bottled exclusively for K&L. The nose is packed full of dark roasted malt, deep dark cocoa, wild honey and maple syrup. On the palate the great high proof doesn’t overwhelm at all and even with a decent splash of water it still offers tons of texture and richness. The gorgeous maltiness of the spirit here is not totally masked by the sherry and I’m grateful for that as there’s no question that this exceptional distillery is at its best unfiltered and cask strength. Expect some dried fruits and subtle exotic spice on the palate with the malt and sherry balancing out nicely for a long nutty finish. I think this will be many peoples’ surprise favorite since it ticks so many boxes and the benefit of finishing here is that we have a nice supply of it for now. Of course, if the real serious drinkers start bunkering it like the last one – even this relatively full sherry butt will be empty before we know it.