Glen Garioch sits in the village of Oldmeldrum in Aberdeenshire, on the eastern edge of the Highland region, and lays a credible claim to being one of the oldest working distilleries in Scotland — founded in 1797 by Thomas Simpson and operating, with interruptions, ever since. It was acquired by Suntory through Morrison Bowmore in 1994 and today forms part of the Beam Suntory stable alongside Bowmore and Auchentoshan.
The 15 Year Old Sherry Cask Matured release, introduced in the early 2020s as part of the distillery's revamped core range, is drawn entirely from ex-sherry casks and bottled at 47.8% ABV without chill filtration. It returns Glen Garioch to the kind of robust, sherry-forward style that older devotees of the distillery remember fondly from pre-1994 bottlings.
The spirit itself is unpeated in modern production — the kilns at Oldmeldrum stopped using peat in 1995 — and the malt's natural fruit and cereal weight stands up well to the Spanish oak. There is none of the cloying sweetness that can plague heavily sherried whiskies; instead, the cask sits in conversation with the spirit rather than shouting over it.
For those who like their Highlanders dressed in dark fruit and walnut, this is a serious dram at a fair price. It is a fitting modern expression of a distillery whose history runs almost as long as legal Scotch whisky itself.
