The Glenlochy 1979 is a delicious dram, sweet with bitter notes, complex and well-balanced, fruity with a hint of peaty smokiness. A wonderful whisky, carrying its years with grace and distinction.
Though whiskies this age lose half their volume to evaporation and few casks survive maturation of over three decades well enough to create truly great scotch, this is an excellent bottle paying fitting homage to a lost distillery.
Roadtested in the Clachaig Inn, Glencoe
There is a truly intimate pleasure, and also privilege, in opening a new bottle of fine old whisky in a highland bar as night draws in.
The Clachaig Inn in Glencoe has been a favourite haunt of mine since the 70s – camping, climbing, motor-biking and mountain-biking – and it is still a privilege to drink in the stone-floored Boots Bar, especially after a hard day in the hills.
Watching – and hearing – the barman crack open a bottle of Glenlochy 1979 Gordon & MacPhail Rare Old, 40 years after the spirit was laid down, in a centuries old drovers’ inn in the wilds of Glencoe, only twenty miles from where the whisky was distilled at the now forever silent Glenlochy Distillery in Fort William, brings a particular delight.
The dram
Whisky
Scotch Single Malt Whisky
Bottler
Gordon & MacPhail
Chill Filtered
No
Country
Scotland
Region
Highland
Series
Rare Old
Colouring
No
Vintage
1979
ABV
46.0% Vol
Distillery
Glenlochy (Silent)
Bottled
2015
Number of bottles
213
Flavour profile
Nose: Sweet vanilla, toffee apple and oak. Light, fresh and fruity, promising complexity.
Palate: Smooth sweet, spiced dryness slightly tannic, followed by lightly sugared fruits, notes of oak and treacle.
Finish: Smooth and full, salted milk chocolate with a hint of smoked spices, ending dry.
With ice, the experience changes as the dram opens up. It clouds characteristically1 as the ABV drops below 46%. The complexity unlocks further and layers of flavour reveal themselves, sea salt, marzipan, honeyed orchard fruits and toffee, as the refreshing journey completes.
If you’re ever in the Clachaig Inn, tell them Ricky sent you. 😎
Slàinte Mhath
1979
To paraphrase the immortal words of Connor MacLeod, 1979 was a very good year.
Ridley Scott terrified cinema-goers with Alien, Sony launched the Walkman, Rod Stewart started asking people if they thought he was sexy, the Trade Unions failed to break Britain with their ‘winter of discontent’, the Cold War failed to go hot even when Russia invaded Afghanistan, and Three Mile Island stopped short of full-on nuclear disaster movie. On the down side, the Iranian Hostage Crisis began, Sid Vicious OD’ed, and the actor James McAvoy was born just down the road from where I’m writing this. (Just joking James).
On a more personal note, my long-suffering black Triumph Bonneville T140V was just one year old, the Clash released London Calling, the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy hit the shelves, Paris and Amsterdam were still peppered with interesting disillusioned GI’s who hadn’t gone home after their tours in Vietnam and Germany, and I was still a long-haired hippy while everyone else was ripping up their jeans to become a punk.
Footnotes:
- Chill-filtering is a process in whisky-making to prevent whisky from becoming cloudy in the bottle, or when water or ice is added, as well as precluding sedimentation from taking place in the bottles. Chilling the whisky causes fatty acids, esters and proteins created in the distillation process to precipitate and then be caught in an adsorption filter. Non chill-filtered whiskies can become cloudy when the ABV drops below 46.3%, but as the chill-filtering process can impact the taste of the whisky, for example by removing peat particles that contribute to the complexity and smokiness of the flavour, some distilleries and bottlers prefer to produce non chill-filtered whisky. ↩︎
