The Scotch Malt Whisky Society released a special Festival Collection. May is a good month, with the Speyside Festival and Feis Ile. The SMWS is present at these festivals, hosting Flavour Hunters events, dinner and takeover events. This year a lot of these will be sherry themed, in line with the SMWS Scotch & Sherry campaign.
Today we are looking at one of the SMWS bottlings in celebration of the Speyside Whisky Festival 2024. Like most of the festival bottles it is not a single cask but a wider release, in order to give more people a chance to experience it. The whisky comes from distillery n°85 and it is nicknamed Freeform Jazz.
The starting point for this small batch was two bourbon hogsheads. One cask was transferred at 11 years old years old to a first fill American oak PX hogshead, and the other at 10 years old to a refill Spanish oak oloroso hogshead.
Glen Elgin 15 yo 2007 ‘Freeform Jazz’ (57,5%, SMWS for Speyside Whisky Festival 2024, PX + Oloroso hogsheads, 853 btl.)
Nose: typical (high toast) European oak, with plenty of spicy notes and sandalwood. Carpenter workshop, up to the point where you could believe it was a bourbon whiskey. Then plenty of raisins, sweet mustard and hints of orange peels. Nice hints of quince and red berry jam and whiffs of marzipan after a while. Lightly burnt apricot pie. A peculiar mix, but it really grew on me.
Mouth: plenty of peppery – a very woody onset. Cigar boxes, hints of leather and pipe tobacco. After that there is a wave of typical Glen Elgin fruits. Sour currants, pineapple, grapes and plums. Then orange peels, candied ginger and herbal tea. Hints of roasted coffee beans in the end. The heat is too much, but once this fades the profile is really nice. Adding water adds a bitter edge too.
Finish: long, with more peppered fruits, candied orange peels, blackberry and herbal tea.
A bit of a hybrid whisk(e)y with a lot of toasted and charred oak along with sherry notes. You’d think this swallows all distillery character, but there is still a nice fruity side as well. Available from the SMWS website.
Obviously you’ll have to become a member first. If you use the coupon code SHERRY10, you’ll now get a 10% discount on a membership + a bottle.