Despite this blog sailing peacefully towards its sixth birthday, we have not yet mapped all the distilleries in Scotland: among the few missing stands out Glencadam, from the Highlands, famous to our foolish eyes for at least two reasons. The first is that the label seems to have been catapulted directly from the ’90s, but we only care, what’s behind it; the second is that it seems that Jim McEwan often claims publicly that Glencadam is one of his favorite whiskies, and in short, Jim is to be trusted, or not? Today we taste the 10-year-old, basic version of the core range, bottled at 46%. The color is light straw.
N: in its clarity and delicacy it offers a good compendium of what an ‘entry level’ whisky of this nature should have. We have a nice yellow fruit (bananas, pears and ripe apples), a well balanced vanilla and very, very fresh cereal. A certain amount of acidity (white wine) and a dash of yeast complete the picture. Floral here and there, for lovers of clean profiles.
P: simple, but with a beautiful presence. As on the nose it offers pleasures scattered between vanilla and yellow fruit (apple and pear juice), as well as increasing vegetal scents: there is indeed a lot of malt and something similar to aniseed, in short vaguely spicy; Serge with the usual wisdom speaks of fennel. The abv at 46% then gives a certain persistence and fullness to the whole.
F: clean and medium. Warm bread with a nice yellow fruit jam.
As Serge writes in the review we linked above, this is a basically honest malt: it tastes of spirit, pure and simple, good and tasty, malty and vegetable, with a very sober and elegant fruity sweetness. 84/100 is the right grade, in our opinion, for an excellent “whisky that tastes like whisky” and costs around forty euros. Good Glencadam.
Recommended background music: The 3rd and the Mortal – So as well.
