A Tale of the Forest, released in 2022, is the third installment in Bill Lumsden's 'Tale of' series, following A Tale of Cake and A Tale of Winter. The premise is a small but interesting departure for Glenmorangie: instead of peat, the malt is kilned with woodland botanicals — juniper berries, birch bark, heather flowers and other foraged material — drawing on a much older Highland tradition of using whatever fuel and aromatic material the surrounding landscape happened to provide.
The result is not a peated whisky in any conventional sense. There is smoke on the nose, but it reads as resinous and herbal rather than maritime or medicinal, and it sits over a familiar Glenmorangie base of orchard fruit, vanilla and lifted floral notes from the distillery's tall stills. Maturation is in ex-bourbon casks, and bottling is at 46% without chill filtration.
It is a thoughtful release rather than a showy one. The botanical-kilned malt gives the spirit a quietly different shape, and the experiment has clearly been done with care; this is not a gimmick bottling. For drinkers who enjoy Glenmorangie's house style but want to see it bent into a slightly stranger silhouette, it is well worth the asking price.
As with the rest of the limited series, availability is finite, and stocks are thinning at retail. Worth grabbing while it lasts.
