Glenrothes 1990/2015 Cadenhead

My god, do I love the look of the dumpy bottles Cadenhead uses for their Small Batch-series. They usually vat two or three different casks from the same distillery together, and that mostly leads to terrific whiskies from their part. Good whisky, good packaging. What more can you want?

Oh, you want a good price too? Well, let me just put it this way. Whisky certainly isn’t cheap, so neither is Cadenhead’s whisky. But in todays market it be a long shot to call their bottlings overpriced. I think most of them are priced very fair.

Today I review the Glenrothes 1990 that was bottled very recently. It is already sold out in most places, except for maybe a couple of places that don’t sell their stuff online.

Glenrothes 1990/2015 (55,7%, Cadenhead, 966bts.)

Nose: Very powerful sherry, sweet and dark. Red berries, plums and black berries with cocoa powder, coffee and polished leather. There is a hint of sulphur. It is very reminiscent of this Glenrothes 1990 W&M, except a little better integrated and more powerful.
Taste: Dried dates, cherry syrup and dark chocolate. Some brown sugar and caramel as well. No sulphur here and it has a pretty meaty mouthfeel to it.
Finish: Sweet (golden syrup) with a hint of smoke. Long and slightly dry.

Rating: 91

A true sherry monster that shows enough complexity and maturity to rise way above your average sherry bomb (a’bunadh or Glendronach CS). I absolutely adore this whisky.

Thijs Klaverstijn

Thijs is a spirits writer and accredited liquorist from The Netherlands. He runs the blog Words of Whisky and contributes to a number of Dutch and international publications.

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