The 1797 Founder's Reserve is the presentation of Glen Garioch's entry-level expression that foregrounds the distillery's founding date — 1797 — on the label. Glen Garioch is among the handful of Scottish distilleries that can claim uninterrupted eighteenth-century roots, and the number is worn with justifiable pride.
Inside the bottle the whisky follows the Founder's Reserve recipe: no age statement, 48% abv, non-chill-filtered, and matured in a combination of American and European oak. The house style is Highland in the Aberdeenshire sense — honeyed, cereal-led and moderately fruited, without the heavier sherry influence of the 12 Year Old.
Thomas Simpson and John Manson set up in Old Meldrum because of the abundant local barley and a reliable water source at the Percock Hills. Glen Garioch's history since has been anything but linear — it was silent from 1995 to 1997 and has changed hands more than once — but the 1797 date endures. The whisky itself is a gentle, unfussy introduction to a distillery whose label tells a longer story than the liquid alone.
