GlenDronach 21 Parliament is named for the gathering of rooks that nest in the trees around the distillery — a 'parliament' of birds that has watched over the whisky since the distillery's founding in 1826. It is matured for twenty-one years in a combination of Pedro Ximénez and oloroso sherry casks, and bottled at 48% — a few crucial percentage points above the 18 Year Old that give the whisky additional weight and presence.
The Parliament is GlenDronach at its most magnificent. Twenty-one years of exclusive sherry maturation have produced a whisky of extraordinary complexity — every element fully integrated, every flavour in its proper place, the whole vastly greater than the sum of its parts. The dried fruit and chocolate are not merely sherry-cask flavours imposed on spirit; they are the product of a genuine marriage between cask and distillate, refined by two decades of patient warehousing.
GlenDronach 21 Parliament is one of the greatest sherried whiskies in the world. At its price — which, while not cheap, significantly undercuts comparable age-statement sherried whiskies from more fashionable distilleries — it represents remarkable value. For those who believe that sherry cask maturation is the highest expression of the whisky-maker's art, the Parliament is the strongest evidence yet presented. A perfect whisky, without qualification or caveat.
