The Glendronach has spent 200 years mastering sherry. So why add Claret?
For its bicentenary release, master blender Dr Rachel Barrie has nudged one of Scotch whisky’s most recognisable house styles in a new direction. Here she tells Tom Pattinson why
The Glendronach 12 Year Old is the best-value sherry-cask whisky around. That’s a fact. Well not a fact at all, but something I would happily argue all evening long. I’ve done plenty of sherry cask tastings, and alongside the Tamdhu 15 Year Old, there is little better in that class.
The Glendronach may not have quite the household recognition of some of the bigger names in sherried Scotch, but pound for dram there is not much that beats the 12 Year Old. Richly sherried, reliably good and still priced at a level where you can open the bottle on any given evening without the need for a special occasion – it’s a bottle that has a permanent spot on my shelf.
So I was genuinely interested when I heard that, for its 200th anniversary, The Glendronach was taking that familiar sherry-led style and introducing something different.
Master blender Dr Rachel Barrie has added French Claret red wine casks to the mix for the new Boynsmill House Edition, a limited-release 14-year-old matured in the distillery’s familiar Oloroso and Pedro Ximénez sherry casks alongside a small number of those French wine casks.
Bottled at 46.8% ABV it goes on sale from 1 September and is something wonderfully unique that the distillery is adding to its collection for The Glendronach’s anniversary celebrations. And priced at £95 it is a lot more accessible than the distilleries other anniversary release: The 56 Year Old, limited to just 200 hand-numbered decanters available worldwide and priced at a £35,000 a bottle.
But back to the Boynsmill House Edition. With The Glendronach so closely associated with Oloroso and Pedro Ximénez, introducing Claret is a fairly significant move for the distillery, so I asked Barrie what she wanted the wine casks to bring and how she made sure they did not pull the whisky too far away from the Glendronach people already know.
The Glendronach’s master blender Dr Rachel Barrie in the warehouses
“I describe the Boynsmill House Edition as a ‘Claret and Sherry Crescendo’ – a complex, transformative, multi-layered dance that brings to life The Glendronach’s rich 200 year legacy,” Barrie tells me.
The Claret, she says, plays more of a supporting role than an attempt to rewrite the recipe, describing it as a “‘top dressing’ of a small number of French Claret red wine casks.”
“In the 200th anniversary release, I was looking to enrich the characterful Glendronach medley of dried-fruit, nuts and spices with indulgent bramble and mellow cacao,” she says, adding that the aim was to balance “the rich and robust character of The Glendronach with the elegance of ripe bramble fruit-filled layers.”
There is some nice historical logic behind the choice. Boynsmill House Edition takes its name from the estate where James Allardice founded The Glendronach in 1826, while the Claret references the wines that the distillery says would have been served during the founder’s dinners at Boynsmill House.
‘The Boynsmill House Edition is a Claret and Sherry Crescendo – a complex, transformative, multi-layered dance that brings to life The Glendronach’s rich 200 year legacy’
The house itself has also been restored as part of the bicentenary and is now being used for invitation-only whisky experiences. The Glendronach claims James Allardice secured Scotland’s second-ever whisky licence at at Boynsmill House.
Anniversary releases inevitably come with plenty of history attached, so I asked Barrie what Boynsmill House Edition was intended to do that the existing range does not, and whether it would ever have appeared without a 200th anniversary to celebrate.
“It was specifically crafted to commemorate our bicentenary, capturing the unique spirit of our home place at a landmark moment in time,” she says. “While we are always exploring new expressions, this particular release is inextricably linked to our 200-year celebration, honouring the legacy of Boynsmill House in a way that wouldn’t have been realised without this milestone.”
The Boynsmill House Edition is described as a ‘Claret and Sherry Crescendo’
It’s nice to understand that Boynsmill was conceived as a commemorative release and created specifically for it, rather than an existing liquid simply being dressed up for an anniversary, which can often be the case.
Barrie describes it as building “a bridge between the past and present at Glendronach”, with the wine casks representing the Claret once poured at Boynsmill alongside a whisky that remains firmly rooted in sherry maturation.
There is also a wider question around experimenting with other casks when sherry has become such a large part of The Glendronach’s identity. High-quality sherry casks are highly sought after, so I asked Barrie whether sourcing the Oloroso and PX casks she wants has become more difficult, and whether that had encouraged the distillery to explore wine casks and other forms of maturation.
She is clear that the Claret is not intended as an alternative to sherry.
“We maintain rigorous standards for our sherry casks, and sourcing the exceptional quality we require remains our absolute priority,” she says. “Our exploration of other cask types, such as the French Claret used here, is not a response to availability but a creative choice to further elevate and enrich our flavour profile.”
Barrie says the intention is for those casks to “harmonise with, rather than replace, our signature style”, which is probably the most useful way of looking at Boynsmill House Edition.
It’s pleasing to hear that the Glendronach has not suddenly decided it wants to be something else, but instead, Barrie has taken a style that has served the distillery extremely well and, for its 200th birthday, given it another layer.
At £95 for a 14-year-old, 46.8% ABV limited anniversary release, the price also feels fairly restrained, particularly when the other option for the bicentenary celebrations costs £39,4005 more.
The Glendronach Boynsmill House Edition is available at The Whisky Shop from 1 September.
