Glen Scotia 15 Year Single Malt Scotch Whisky
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2021 San Francisco World Spirits Competition Gold Medal Winner
Richer colors. Broad and medium-weight with citrus peels, ginger snap biscuits. Sweet and with great depth. Apricot aromas develop then drift towards fruit salad. After a short time the wood come to the fore and water helps to release baked fruit. A complicated palate where the initial nose would lead you to expect plump fruits, what you get is a surprisingly dry element. The palate fleshes out as the first impact of the nose fades. Adding water brings out the caramelized elements balanced with the wood elements expected of a 15 year-old. The finish is firm and slightly dry.
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This Campbeltown single malt has a topaz hue and crème brûlée scent. The palate is mildly smoky and drying, showing espresso, vanilla, leather and cigar wrapper, plus a baking spice finish. Water pulls out a fudgy undertone, overall it's still relatively oaky and dry.
Whisky making on the Campbeltown peninsula dates back to 1636 when a farm at Crosshill made a return for 6 quarts of Aqua Vitae payable to the town of Lochhead, the former name for Campbeltown. With the ready availability of local barley ‘bere’, peat for drying the malted barley and fresh water, the area became a rich bed of illicit whisky production through the late 18th century and the first years of the 19th century.
The final key element was the Armour family, a firm of local plumbers and coppersmiths, who arrived in Campbeltown in 1798. Robert Armour’s coppersmith business, set up in 1811, was the perfect cover for the manufacture of 4 part illicit stills made up of ‘The Vessel’, typically less than 40 gallons, ‘head, arm and the worm’. Robert Armour kept detailed records in his Still Book up until 1817.
Campbeltown was reportedly the ancient seat of the Scottish Parliament set up by King Fergus in 503AD. Indeed the site of the Glen Scotia distillery is built near to Campbeltown’s ancient parliament square. It is suggested that the Stone of Destiny, on which all Scottish monarchs were crowned, came from here.
Towards the southern end of the Mull of Kintyre, Campbeltown is an isolated, distinctive place. The whisky produced here is special too - so much so that it’s classified as a separate region, quite apart from the Highland, Speyside, Lowland and Islay whiskies which are perhaps better known today.
With an excellent water supply, easy access to peat and grain and a growing market in Victorian Britain and beyond, little Campbeltown had 28 distilleries by 1851, and proudly proclaimed itself ‘the whisky capital of the world’. Today only three distilleries remain, of which, Glen Scotia, is one of the finest in Scotland.
“A good gulp of hot Scotch Whisky at bedtime–it’s not very scientific, but it helps!”
Alexander Fleming, Scottish inventor of penicillin, prescribed it as a cure for the common cold. Today Single Malt Scotch Whiskies are prized by enthusiasts and aficionados the world over for their rarity, age and complexity. By definition these must be produced in Scotland from a single distillery and made entirely from malted barley, using a pot still. The appearance, aroma and flavor of a Single Malt Scotch Whisky can vary widely depending on whether it was produced in the Highlands, Lowlands Islands, Speyside, Islay or Campbelltown regions.