The GlenDronach 14 Year Old

The GlenDronach was founded in 1826 and is two hundred years old this year. It has marked it with a limited release 14 year old single malt at 46.8% ABV, at $120.

Consider what a two-hundredth normally produces. A 40 year old in a crystal decanter inside a walnut box, two hundred bottles, $24,100, sold before the release lands, photographed for magazines by people who will never taste it. The anniversary bottle is an object that exists to be an asset. GlenDronach has put out a 14 year old at ninety pounds, which is a price at which a person might open it.

This is not charity. A $120 bottle people drink does more for a distillery's next twenty years than an $24,100 bottle in a safe in Singapore, and GlenDronach's whole proposition is sherry cask maturation at a price the sherry monsters above it abandoned. Ageing a heavily sherried malt for fourteen years and selling it under a hundred pounds says who the distillery thinks its customer is.

46.8% sits above the 40% floor and above the 43% most core ranges settle at, so it arrives with enough structure to take water and enough to survive ice if that is your crime.