Advent 2022 #3 - Glenfiddich Fire & Cane Batch 4

 

This interested me enough to get a sample a couple years ago, and here we are with it turning up in the final calendar from my 30ml sample collection.

Glenfiddich Fire & Cane Batch 4, Speyside Single Malt, 43% ABV

Minutia: Matured in ex-bourbon casks and finished in ex-rum casks. Reviewed blind, neat in an opaque glencairn.

Color: Amontillado Sherry; 0.9.

Nose: Malty. Some hay, apple skins. It feels like there is some smoke in here, but it’s not present enough for me to be sure. 

Taste: Sweet malt. Or more like a sweetness that switches between malty, fruity, and honey notes.

Finish: Ash. Malt. Shorter.

Guess: I was thinking Laddie, but the vague smoke in the nose suggested peat making me think it could be the Fire & Cane sample I know is in the pool, The ash in the finish cemented my guess as the Fire & Cane.

Feels really good to be so precise with a guess, I gotta say. Anyway. This whisky doesn’t have a ton going on in terms of complexity. The taste is mostly just sweet, the finish doesn’t really linger, and the nose doesn’t have a ton going on. That said, the fact that the sweet taste is in flux for the duration it’s in the mouth is a nice plus. It is light and simple, which is not bad, but I tend to prefer more robust flavors.

Score: 77

r/Scotch Wardhead 22

It was neat to be a part of the reddit community while this was being bottled specifically for us. I couldn’t swing a bottle of each (as happy as I was two were chosen!) so this is the one I ordered a sample of. 

Wardhead 22, Speyside Blend (teaspooned), 54.7% ABV

Minutia: A single malt in all ways but the one that counts, this is a cask of Glenfiddich teasooned with a bit of Balvenie so it can’t be sold as a single malt. It was distilled on February 20, 1997, matured in a refill hogshead, bottled on October 7, 2019, and enjoyed neat in a glencairn.

Color: Gold.

Nose: Honey, appley malt. Oaky vanilla.

Taste: Burst of fruit, specifically apple. There’s a malty quality that is reminiscent of beer. It’s not quite a distinct flavor, rather a general underlying profile.

Finish: Medium, citrus, vanilla, oak, malt returns.

This was very nice outside my normal flavor profile. Often I find myself disappointed in Speysides and wish they were better, and this is better in the ways I want it. I think for me, based on this and a 26 year old IB Speyside I recently reviewed, Speysides need significant age for me to increase cask influence. Having already tried but not reviewed the bottle of Ardmore I bought, I am confident I made the right choice in which bottle to buy based on my preferences, but I wouldn’t have been disappointed at all if I had the cash and space to have bought a whole bottle of this one.

Score: 81