After a few independent bottlings of Glenallachie, here is finally one of those new official bottlings from Billy Walkers new pet project. After Glendronach and Benriach, now Glenallachie gets the Walker treatment, and the results are here for all to be seen. When this new core range was released in 2018, it included a Cask Strength 10yo, a 12yo, a 18yo and I believe a 25yo. Today there are many, many more of those blended and reduced bottlings available. A year after the introduction came this 15yo. Even without trying it, I already, really, really liked the look of it. The wonderful Sherried color looks nice, the blue label looks nice, and since the other Whiskies from the core range were pretty good as well, the 15yo appeared very promising to me. But buyer beware, looks can be deceiving, but hopefully not this time…

Color: Dark orange brown.

Nose: Sherried, slightly tarry and dusty. Cask toast, cookie dough and oranges. Milk chocolate, raisins, cherries and vanilla ice cream with quite a lot of floral aroma’s, as well as some perfumed wood. In part a perfume and ever so slightly, the smell of hair lacquer. Modern and clean. Very modern Sherry notes, which is miles away from the notes of Sherried Whiskies distilled in the 60’s and 70’s. Sweet (pink bubblegum) and mildly fruity, ever so slightly rotting fruit with a strange acidity to it. Weird. Lots of succulent raisins combined with dry dust. Vanilla and soft wood with lots of sharp fresh air and mint. Painted oak cask ends and dried virgin oak. Yes soft and dry oak is here to stay. Citrus fruit confectionery, you know, the ones coated with sugar. Where initially there was a sense of fruit to this, after some breathing this turns a bit darker and less fruity-friendly, yet retaining its (ultra) modern (woody) quality. Freshly opened, this didn’t seem all that interesting to me, somewhat closed and thin. Luckily this is no longer the case, at least not to this extent. Enough happening now after 1/3rd of the bottle gone.

Taste: Initially a bit thin and quite sweet, toffee and caramel sweetness, not even fruity sweetness. Now tar, cardboard and toasted oak, raisins and yes, some cinnamon. Wow lots of raisins in what seems to be a full bowl of vanilla ice-cream. It’s like (PX) raisins are dissolved in here. Further back a little woody bitterness. Initially a short-lived unbalance with some sort of acidity that doesn’t seem to integrate well (the rotting bit from the nose maybe?) Sometimes the “thin” bit returns as well. Fruity wood-infused sugar water. A strange sort of fruity sweetness. Not very fruity at all actually. Cookie dough and a trickle of smoke from the fire place. Quite a short finish though, just the warmth (and some oaky acidity and bitterness) stays behind for a while longer. Actually,, it is sometimes a bit too sweet or off. Orange skins, and yogurt acidity.

This is a Malt that does some things right and some things well, yet it doesn’t convince me enough as a whole. It seems a bit cold and too modern. In no way do I manage to click with it. A digital Malt. Vinyl aficionados will understand. On the plus side, this is quite different from the 12yo and the 10yo cask strength editions, which warrants its existence. On the down side, it’s just not that big, full, fruity or inspiring. I really expected a lot more from an official Sherried 15yo. In a way, I also expected a bit more from the Tamdhu 15 as well, but for me that one turned out to be nicer than this one though. Enough nice aromas on the nose here, but I feel this could have been and should have been better. I’m sure this will improve with future batches, since the newer distillate seems to be better. That’s why for me, for now, the first 10yo Cask Strength version is the most recommendable from the ever-expanding core range. But there are so many bottlings now, and I’ve hardly tasted them all. By now three more batches exist, so I hope those are carrying on the torch lit by the first one.

When tasting these new Glenallachies for the first time, it were the younger ones which surprised me the most and just seemed the most interesting since they seem to be showing the way forward, seen from the perspective of the newer distillate, predominantly, yet not exclusively, aged in Ex-Bourbon casks. I believe from this, that Glenallachie will be better with every passing year, as long as they manage to source the better quality casks available. Since the initial releases, it seems like every month a few new expressions see the light of day, and they aren’t all single casks as well. Somewhat similar to what Highland Park is doing now and Benriach did earlier. At the time of writing, three different virgin oak expressions were released…

Since I liked the 10yo Cask Strength version and the 12yo, and the 18yo only scored just one point more than the 12yo (at more than twice the price), I went for this 15yo, which seemed like a safe bet. I thought it should be at least as good as those mentioned earlier, and well, it is quite a dark colored expression, which didn’t break the bank, so I went for it without much thought and opened it before the aforementioned expressions I picked up earlier than the 15yo. Well this 15yo is a funny puppy. First of all, it doesn’t taste like a proper 15yo, but more like a NAS Sherry bottling. Somewhat designed and maybe rushed to the store perhaps? I don’t know. OK, the bottle has been open for only a few weeks and is still nearly full. Maybe it needs some more time and air. For now it lacks depth and it is more about cheap cream Sherry and PX, than good old quality Oloroso, which I expected. I’m actually a bit disappointed to be honest. Sure, oak and toasted cask are present, but the sugar water still dominates. Seems to me this was brought to the market as a direct competitor to the equally sweet Glendronach 15yo “Revival” and maybe the Tamdhu 15yo. In the end it never really grew on me, and it didn’t really get much better with time. It was fixed to much in its place hindering development, as if it was told not to. I finished the bottle rather quickly, which took me by surprise a bit, so, why did this go so fast? Did it become that good after some more breathing? Not exactly, in fact the Whisky is nothing more than OK, do-able, and yes, it luckily did have its moments, however, it went down so fast because it bored me and I wanted it out of the way for something better. So for a while it became the Whisky to start an evening with, until it was gone…

Points: 83