Glenglassaugh 40 Years Old Crystal Decanter 44.6% 1967

Professional reviews

BOW (94)

Official tasting note:

Nose: A strong powerful nose that begins with the aroma of geen apples falling to earth onto wet moss and grass. This gives way to a medley of boiled fruit sweets. Despite its complexity, hints of rasberries, blackberries and hints of ripe banana emerge. Finally, the refined sherry notes of sultanas, fruit cake and rich creamy fudge take over.
Palate: The rich sherry flavours combine with the boiled fruits to give an incredibly powerful yet complex whisky. The original distillery character is still surprisingly evident despite this whisky´s great age.
Finish: A long and consistent finish leaves the freshness of the Granny Smiths apples on the palate. This is a very powerful whisky very well suited to after dinner sipping.

Serge Valentin (92)

Colour: deep amber. Nose: very fragrant, starting on precious wood, raisins and hints of camphor, all that working in sync. Pretty perfect! Goes on with hints of metal polish and damp earth and then many cooked and dried tropical fruits (not fresh). Papayas, pineapples, longans… Gets finally much more leathery and ‘tertiary’, with hints of beef jerky and parsley, even a bit of garlic. Pine resin. A very, very complex old Glenglassaugh! Beautiful. Mouth: a very rich oakiness at first sipping, but an elegant one. A lot of bitter chocolate, various fruit jellies and jams (strawberries first), some vanilla, various herbal teas (rosehip, chamomile, lime tree blossom), and a wide combination of spices including cloves, cardamom, black pepper, carvi and cinnamon (lots). Develops on loads of dark chocolate and coffee beans plus notes of cough syrup. Very ‘torrefied’. Finish: long, spicy, quite tannic but not excessively so. Quite some oranges in the aftertaste. Comments: a 40yo that’s still rather nervous and ‘vibrant’. Excellent and, above all, not too oaky. I like it better than the 30yo – am I normal?