GLENFARCLAS 1966 FINO CASK 50.5%

Speyside whisky producer Glenfarclas have introduced a 1966 fino Sherry cask expression as the first part of a new series.

A total of 1,400 bottles have been filled from four  fino casks which were discovered in the Glenfarclas warehouses last year. 300 are available to the UK market and we have 3 left of our own allocation.

“We didn’t realise we had this,” admitted George Grant, sales director at Glenfarclas. After realising that a group of casks had been seasoned with something other than the oloroso Sherry more normally used by the brand, the team consulted diaries kept by Grant’s grandfather and discovered that he had purchased some fino casks from an Edinburgh broker.

Pointing to the lighter fino character that appears on the nose in contrast to the brand’s typically richer style, Grant suggested that the familiar Glenfarclas expression then emerges on the palate, although he added: “it doesn’t have the bitter chocolate flavours.”

Each bottle is packaged in a black box bearing a silver coin which features an image of John Grant, who founded the distillery six generations ago. It marks the first in a series of six different Glenfarclas special releases, one for each generation of the family. “Another one is coming on board that is going to be totally different,” hinted Grant at the future development of this series. Although confirming that the distillery had produced fino cask-aged whiskies before, Grant noted that these had been “much younger” expressions than the new release.

“We did an experiment with different casks and realised that oloroso matched our whiskies best,” he recalled. “Most people like a fuller flavour but there are always people looking for something different.”