My bottle: Distilled 2001, bottled 2014. Nose: Vanilla, malty cereal with an earthy character. Barley sugar, brown sugar/caramel, orange peel, some sherry and a funkiness. There's almost a bourbon character to this nose. Subtle wood. Palate: A slow and measured arrival, starting out slightly sweet with orange and honey, then turning spicy . Gingerbread, caraway seed, cinnamon. Not particularly engaging. Finish: Medium. Dry rather than sweet with a restrained spiciness and some faint orange zest. Spoiled by a sour/bitter note that emerges at the end. Rather disappointing - I don't know if I got a bad bottle, but it is not very engaging. The nose is the best part, and even that's not really great. Very average for the money. "Average" : 78/100 (2.75 stars)
About this bottle
This whisky, distilled in 2001 and bottled in 2012 (which makes this an 11 year old whisky, of course) is aged in four different barrels. Two were ex-sherry casks, one a first fill Spanish oak and the other a first fill American oak. The other two are refill casks that previously contained Sherry and Bourbon, respectively. First fill means that whisky has not been aged in the barrel prior to creating this whisky and refill means that it has been used to age whisky.
How it tastes
Measured across 14 flavor axes. Tap a note to find other bottles that lead with it.
Reviews
Showing the most detailed of 20 parsed reviews.
Glenrothes used to be a wine company, that is why they release their bottles with a year statement. This is the 2001 expression, which wasn't a bad whisky, but definitively not a memorable one. Bottled at 43%abv On the nose is quite good; Vanilla cream, Prunes, Fresh forest, Orange jam, really Complex and changing aromas. On the palate is very smooth, and that is rare for the notes it has: Allspice, Liquorice, Butter, Chocolate butter and Tobacco. Finsish is medium and full of liquorice. Overall i give this dram a good 87 over 100.
Compared with the Select Reserve, the nose is richer with (toned-down almost Macallan-like) sherry. Apple, some ginger, sharp honey, mild oak and more beloved petrichor, Glenrothes seems to have a more pronounced note of this than other distilleries... earning them my admiration. Creamy vanilla follows you to the palate, which also conveys apple and nutty malt. Finish is medium length with a touch of baking spices. A light and easy-to-enjoy dram, quality, but nothing earth shaking. Dry glass: malt chocolate.
I really like this. Less refined, lighter in taste to my palate. Definitely spicy, but not overwhelmingly so. There's a tart woodiness in this dram that undergirds each sip, and my inexperience interprets its four-barrel influence as complexity. I'd love to have it again. Thanks for a great date night, my wife.
Delicate and fruity with a dash of cinnamon, this is a wonderful whisky. The nose has notes of pear and honey, and while the body is disappointingly light, the balance of all these flavors more than compensates the experience. The finish is smooth, albeit short, but overall... wonderful.
Pretty good, doesn't really stand out in a crowd. Pretty sweet and has a little bit of a bite to it, but a playful one, like your third girlfriend, find memories but not worth going back for
14 more reviews were collected for this bottle. The longest ones are shown first.
Tastes like this
Closest flavor profiles across the whole catalog.
