Speyside Stories (Part 3!) - Glen Moray Tasting and Glenfiddich, Aberlour Stops
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Last but not least, part three of my Speyside stories! A quick reminder on the full series:
Part 3: Glen Moray tour and stops at Glenfiddich and Aberlour
After finishing a delightful day at BenRiach and GlenDronach, we found ourselves with some time to kill on Wednesday morning before our Glen Moray tour. As such, we decided on some impromptu drop-ins at Glenfiddich and Aberlour.
Glenfiddich Whisky Lounge
Details: First stop of the day is an early afternoon stop at Glenfiddich. We didn’t have anything firm planned, and also didn’t have time for a formal tour. Like any reasonable tourist, we made a beeline for the whisky lounge! Inside is a menu that could lead you to die in bankrupt happiness, most notably the list of distillery exclusive cask strength pours. You can try a pour of their current hand-fill offering (a 15 year matured in bourbon, sherry, and new oak casks), or for a cool 4,440 GBP, you can try a 65 year old cask strength pour- distilled in 1958. I opt for the significantly more reasonable, yet still not exactly cheap, 33 year old sherry cask matured recommendation from the bartender.
I’m somewhat ashamed to admit, it’s heavenly. Like, one of the best whiskys I’ve ever had heavenly. Maybe it’s a bit of a set and setting situation, I’m on vacation, there’s a fire going in this lounge, it’s my second pour of the day so my palate is awake and ready for the challenge… but it tastes like liquified leather and blackberry jam. It coats the palate with a fruity, oily, jammy texture. I make a joke with the bartender that I should pull the fire alarm and slip the bottle in my pocket, she doesn’t find it that funny. Anyways, after that taste of nirvana it’s time to hit the road…
Notable Gift Shop Offerings: A 15 year hand-fill cask, and then a few 20/30 year distillery exclusive cask strength options that are comically out of my price range.
Aberlour Visitor Center
Details: VERY quick stop here, more out of convenience and love of their whisky than planning. But on a whim we stopped by to see if they were doing any quick tastings. They were all full for the day, but offered that if we were interested in any of the distillery single casks they could pour us a small sample. The visitor center gift shop itself is quite small, and the distillery is currently undergoing some renovations so they are only offering tastings at the moment, not tours. I’ll tell you what though, as an overseas tourist badly concerned with checked baggage space, I can't tell you how much I appreciate that they sell 50 cl bottles of their gift shop exclusives. I opted to try, but not buy, a 16 year second fill sherry butt aged offering. Clocking in at 66.5%, it was just a bit too hot and unbalanced for me.
Notable Gift Shop Offerings: 10, 16, and 18 year Distillery Reserve Collection offerings from 2022 (I didn’t see 2023 but I could have missed it). A 2020 Distillery Reserve 21 year Second Fill Sherry Butt.
Glen Moray: Chocolate and Whisky Experience Tasting
Price/Length: £41.67 + taxes, tour runs approximately an hour.
Details: First off, a quick appreciation for Glen Moray’s visitor’s center which essentially has a full blown cafe. Great place to have a quick refreshment or bite while sitting amongst and tasting delicious whisky. As for the tasting itself, it functioned as an especially refreshing change of pace after taking a few tours of various production sites. For this one, we just rolled into the tasting room, which is setup in the former tax officers building on site. The setup inside was a beautiful array of four whiskys and four chocolates from Edinburgh chocolatier “Coco.” After some quick info on the distillery from our gracious host, Sophie, it was time to explore our pairings!
We start with Glen Moray’s Signature Classic paired with sea salt and lime milk chocolate. This pairing worked beautifully in my opinion, with the subtle lime in the chocolate accentuating the citrus notes of the whisky. Next up, the Elgin Limited Edition, a 10 year old Chardonnay cask finish, paired with rhubarb and ginger milk chocolate. Bit of a bummer on a few levels here, as Sophie told us how this was produced in the hopes that Elgin would get approved to be officially a city which would help out the area a lot in terms of funding for various services… and they sadly were not. The pairing itself also did not work for me, it really brought out a super spicy and drying effect from the whisky that I did not particularly enjoy. Round three is a UK exclusive, an Amontillado finished whisky and orange milk chocolate. Now we’re back on track! A nice interplay with the orange from the chocolate and the citrus, nuttiness, and oily texture from the whisky. Delicious. Ok, final iteration! Here we have a distillery exclusive, Peated Port, and the most Scottish chocolate imaginable… HAGGIS SPICE dark chocolate. Like haggis and peat? Great! You’ll probably love this pairing. I enjoyed it quite a bit, though I almost wish the pour itself was a bit more port forward ONLY for the purpose of this pairing. A bit of a thicker, more port forward flavor would play really nice with this chocolate.
Overall Thoughts: I should add, you get to take home a full set of all of these chocolate bars which is an awesome souvenir. But this was just the perfect trip capper honestly, a relaxing and delicious setup. It’s actually a lot of chocolate to eat throughout too! Sophie was also a hero and let us try a few other pours in the tasting room before we left too, like one of their two current handfill options, a Tokaji cask finish.
Notable Gift Shop Offerings: A 2008 distilled Tokaji Cask handfill, a 2015 Peated Cognac handfill, and a 2014 bourbon cask distillery exclusive.
That’s all for my Speyside Stories series! Thanks for checking this out!