Do you have any idea what it’s like to fly 3400 miles across the globe to hop into a car and drive 60 more miles to the middle of Speyside only to walk into your favorite distillery and find out that all hand-filled bottles are peated that day? Talk about irony if you’re not a fan of peat. lol.
Today we’ve got the Glenfiddich 15 Distillery Edition (DE) pitted against a 14 year old bottle I handfilled in the gift shop at Glenfiddich. Being there during the week known as the “Spirit of Speyside” means super special offerings from many of the local distilleries. Unfortunately for my palate, the special offering Glenfiddich does for each SoS week is a peated one. Let’s dig into it. 🙂
The 15 DE is a harvest gold color at 51% abv as opposed to the dark brown leather of the 59% abv 14 hand filled bottle (HFB).
The 15 DE’s nose is raw sugar and freshly halved apples drizzled in a simple syrupy mess. Is this heaven?! The 14 HFB is campfire smoke with tree fruit notes hinding behind it. Maybe someone started a bonfire in an apple orchard. This type of smokey peat reminds me much of the friendlier peats like that of Wolfburn and Highland Park. There is no iodine here!
The 15 DE is a bullet train to sweet city. The apples that you might be used to in Glenfiddich offerings have been transmuted into peaches. Soft and sweet at 51% is a nice departure from typical whiskies at this proof. The finish is warm with sprinkles of spices and not much else. It’s a simple dram but dram good. It really makes me want to pair it with peach slices dusted in granulated sugar. The 14 HFB is manageable at 59% but it’s definitely higher in peat content than Highland Park. A second and third sip are letting my palate know that Glenfiddich might have gone a bit far with the peat. Their sister distillery’s 17 Year Peated offering isn’t anywhere near this potent.
*sigh* That was a long way to travel to get a bottle of something that isn’t up my alley. It means I’ll definitely need to make another trip and get a custom bottle (which go for $350+ but you can pic the colors of your box and everything!!)
So there we have it. An excuse for me to head back to Scotland and get a real bottle of Glenfiddich handfilled. 😀
scotchnsniff.com 
Wait till you try Balvenie’s 2002 Peat Week. The peat is there but it compliments Balvenie’s honey notes in a good way.
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I’ve got a bottle and was going to do a review of it against the 17 Peated Cask 😀
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