Glen Spey 21 Years Old 1991 Dimensions (54.3%, Duncan Taylor, Cask #800826, 260 Bottles, 2013)

• 54.3% ABV, £90 for 70cl
• Score: 84/100

What they say:

Dimensions is a super-premium collection highlighting the multi-dimensional nature of the Duncan Taylor Portfolio. The whiskies in this range vary from 10 year old single malts and grains up to 39 years of age.

The rarity of the Dimensions range is implicit. Each whisky is the product of a single cask, bottled at natural cask, bottled at natural cask strength and presented in a luxury carton. The provenance of each cask is featured on the label, including the origin of the spirit, distillation and bottling dates, cask number, the number of bottles and the individual bottle number.

The authentic characteristics of the spirit, cask and distillery environment have been preserved in the whisky by ensuring that all the whiskies in the range have been matured in the distillery warehouses, and by neither chilled-filtering nor artificially colouring the whisky. Thus the range has all the multi-dimensional characteristics of flavours and aromas that are true to the nature of their respective distilleries.

The breadth of the range is matched by the depth of the whisky. Cleanse your perception, test your senses, and unlock the dimensions.

Bottled for Duncan Taylor’s Dimensions range, this Glen Spey from Speyside matured for 21 years in a sherry cask before being bottled with an outturn of 260 bottles.

What I say:

The 5th and final sample in our Horizon21 tasting session of 21 year old single malts come from the Glen Spey Distillery, a previously un-sampled distillery for us here at The Whiskyphiles. This particular example was bottled by Duncan Taylor for their Dimensions range.

Colour:

Light gold (suggesting refill sherry cask, as there was little indication of sherry in the colour)

Nose:

Acetone, estery pear drops, citrus (lemon/lime?) and oaky wood

Taste:

Sweet and sugary honey, woody oak, a little spiced white pepper, vanilla and coconut, apple and pear fruits, this one was a little soapy in mouthfeel after addition of water

Finish:

Medium, spicy but thin-bodied with a little bitterness of woody oak

Would I buy it:

Possibly the least favourite of our tasting session, though the standard was uniformly high from all whiskies we sampled. We were very surprised afterwards to discover this whisky was matured in a sherry cask! There is a good strong influence of oak wood in this whisky which may have indicated European oak influence? As usual with newly discovered distilleries I would also love to try more expressions of Glen Spey to get a feel for the characters inherent in their spirit. I suspect light cask influence despite the age of this expression…