Drams with Dougal: Glenfiddich drams on the podcast
Drams with Dougal
This week on the podcast we were joined by Glenfiddich Brand Ambassador Dougal Gordon who is also the sixth generation of the Grant Family to work for William Grant & Sons.
It’s a cracking episode and well worth a listen to hear the full family history from starting out in 1887 until now.
We never ask our guests to bring drams with them, but if someone offers or brings some along, we’ll never refuse a dram from them.
Thankfully, when Dougal arrived for the recording, he had a nice big bag with them and it was clinking.
I did buy a dram over the bar and decided to go ‘on brand’ for this one and picked a dram I’d never seen or tried before.
I saw a bottle on the back bar at Diggers that I didn’t recognise. It was a Glenfiddich Vintage Cask which is slightly peated.
Peated Glenfiddich?
I’ve no recollection of trying the Glenfiddich Fire & Cane so I don’t think I’ve ever tried peated Glenfiddich.
The Vintage Cask is a throwback to the original spirit produced at the distillery which would have had a bit smoke in it. Just like the neighbouring Balvenie Distillery, Glenfiddich also run peated spirit through the stills for a week every year.
I liked this dram.
Like most of the Glenfiddich ranges, there’s a mix of European Oak and Bourbon casks used in the maturation. It was gentle and easy going with soft mainland peat in the background.
It’s 40% abv which takes the edge away and probably cuts down on a bit of the flavour. I’m becoming more and more understanding of why 40% abv can sometimes be a bit disappointing in a dram.
It was £5 over the bar and a nice easy going sipper with nothing too complex going on to over think about. Soft, gentle, well balanced and nice to try something a bit different with the smoky element.
But at about £150 for a bottle, I’d expect more bang for my buck if I was spending that on the bottle. However, a good gifting bottle for someone who likes the occasional dram.
During the recording, Dougal produced some great whiskies from his bag and generously shared them with us. Of course, being the BA for Glenfiddich, I was sure he would remain on brand. But the first bottle he produced from his bag wasn’t a triangular bottle which was a bit of a surprise.
Dram number one was a Cadenhead’s Enigma 27 Year Old Blended Malt which Dougal explained to us was actually a ‘Wardhead’.
For those not familiar with the ‘Wardhead’ it’s the alias for used by the distillery and independent bottlers for teaspooned Glenfiddich with Balvenie.
A quick explanation of Teaspooning
We’ve talked a lot about this recently on the podcast. Teaspooning is adding a tiny amount (usually a teaspoon’s worth) of single malt from another distillery to a cask from the primary distillery.
In this instant, William Grant & Sons have added a teaspoon of Balvenie into a cask of Glenfiddich.
The main reason for this is brand control. As soon as a teaspoon of another distillery is added to a cask, it can’t be called single malt whisky and it also can’t carry the name of the primary distillery as it is now technically a ‘blended malt’.
Brands will do this to prevent independent bottlers from bottling casks with the distillery brand on the labels. It protects and controls the distillers brand name and quality assurance as well.
Some bottlers have trademark agreements with aliases/brands of teaspooned malt. ‘Burnside’ is the trademark brand for Balvenie teaspoon with Glenfiddich and ‘Wardhead’ is the alias/brand of Glenfiddich teaspooned with Balvenie.
So Dougal might not have brought in a Glenfiddich branded bottle, but what he had brought was 27 year old single cask Glenfiddich, with a drop of Balvenie in there as well.
This whisky had spent 27 years fully maturing in Bourbon Hogshead.
It is a cracker.
51.8% abv makes it very easy to drink at cask strength and it’s right up my street with what I’m enjoying right now.
Sweetness, light floral, apples, toffee, nice texture with a bit of spice.
I liked this dram a lot. At £175, it’s a dram that I’m very tempted to treat myself to.
F1 Drams
Next up from Dougal’s bag was the new Glenfiddich 16 Aston Martin F1 release.
This bottling is part of the new sponsorship deal between Glenfiddich and Aston Martin F1 team.
Plenty of cynics will scoff at this kind of collaboration.
A marketing gimmick pushing Glenfiddich towards the F1 audience. But this isn’t an overpriced whisky with standard liquid in a fancy bottle.
First of all, the price point of this isn’t pushing the whisky into the ‘luxury’ market. It’s a tasty, interesting and accessible dram.
For £75, it’s good bang for buck.
There’s a mix of American virgin oak, refill bourbon and American oak wine casks used which gives a sweet and rich flavour.
Theres fruity and juiciness, and the abv being 43% gives at a bit more substance and a bit of an edge.
I like the idea of the American oak wine casks. The wine isn’t overpowering the whisky which stops it becoming ‘winesky’.
I enjoyed this dram a lot more than I thought I would.
It’s a release that could easily have been a bit ‘meh’ and still sold well because of the collaboration of the brands. But it’s solid, interesting and has a bit more to it than a soft generic release.
Family Cask
We do get spoiled on the pod. And Dougal really pushed the boat out with a cask sample from Dougal’s own Glenfiddich cask that was filled on his 30th birthday.
This would have been even more special if Dougal was approaching his 60th birthday. However, he’s 36.
Every cloud has a silver lining, there’s plenty of well aged Glenfiddich, but there’s very little (if any) around to try that’s under 10 years old.
So not only were we getting a family member cask sample, we were getting to try Glenfiddich at 6 years old. It’s a refill bourbon cask and the sample was sitting at 63%.
Dougal explained to us that this is one of the first samples pulled from the cask. Dougal hadn’t even tried this yet, which made the dram even more special.
This is a young whisky. I wasn’t expecting to be blown away with it and why should I?
There was hardly an colour to the dram, which is understandable considering it’s a refill bourbon cask.
But there was a lot more flavour coming through than I expected. It needed a few drops of water to take the edge off the alcohol. This opened it up to maltiness expected from a whisky this age but the orchard fruits, green apples and fruitiness of Glenfiddich did come through.
A great experience to try a whisky like this.
Luxury Drams
The last dram that Dougal pulled from his magic bag of Glenfiddich goodies was a sample of the Glenfiddich 31 Grand Chateau.
This has spent 23 years in American oak and European oak than 9 years Bordeaux cask.
The wine influence is clear in this dram. As Dougal explained, maturing whisky in wine casks is a tricky balancing act. If left too long, the wine can overpower the spirit, dictating the flavour rather than just assisting it. The maturation process sometimes needs extra time to let the flavour ‘pendulum’ swing back, mellowing the initial strong wine notes to achieve a greater balance.
There are tannins which often put me off, I’m not a lover of wine, so if whisky from wine casks starts to give me wine vibes, I’m easily put off.
I think the key phrase when talking about anything from Glenfiddich is ‘balance’. It’s the skill that Master Blender Brian Kinsman has used to make Glenfiddich the top selling single malt Scotch whisky all over the world.
We’ve talked about the importance of distillery character, and each of these Glenfiddich drams we had are all very different. None of them tasted the same as the last, but equally, they all had the same identity through the characteristics from Glenfiddich.
Balancing the different wood types, what the casks had held before, and maintaining the distillery character is the key to creating a successful whisky.
The Glenfiddich 31 Grand Chateau is well and truly out of my budget at around the £1,500 mark per bottle.
If I did have the kind of money to spend on a bottle of this, I don’t know if I’d be desperate to buy it. At 47.6% abv, this was probably the most complex dram of the night, it was smooth and tasty, the tannins were subtle and it tasted like an expensive dram. A real treat to end an amazing night learning about the Grant family and chatting whisky.
Dram of the night
For me, dram of the night was the Enigma 27 year old ‘Wardhead’, since writing this, I’m even closer to buying a bottle.
A close second is the 16 year old Aston Martin bottle, really good whisky and I was surprised at the price point which I thought would have been higher.
Find out what the difference is between single malt and blended whisky
