The GlenDronach 14 Year Old

The GlenDronach was founded in 1826 and is therefore 200 years old this year. It has marked the occasion with a limited release 14 year old single malt at 46.8% ABV, priced at £90.

Consider what a 200th anniversary normally produces. It produces a 40 year old in a crystal decanter inside a walnut presentation box, 200 bottles, £18,000, sold before the press release lands, photographed for magazines by people who will never taste it. The anniversary bottle is a category of object that exists to be an asset. GlenDronach has instead put out a 14 year old at ninety quid, which is a price at which a person might open it.

This is not charity. A £90 bottle that people actually drink does more for a distillery's next twenty years than a £18,000 bottle that sits in a safe in Singapore, and GlenDronach's whole proposition is sherry cask maturation at a price the sherry monsters above it have abandoned. Ageing a heavily sherried malt for 14 years and selling it under a hundred pounds is a statement about 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.