The Glen Garioch 21 Year 1994 from The Rare Casks

Tasting notes:
The short version is that the nose here is fantastic. The long version is that it’s an orgiastic feast: The centerpiece of the table features lemons slowly erupting from the top of a heavily lacquered tree after having been forced through its xylem under pressure. But there’s also an angel food cake lemon liqueur flambé next to a beef stew with red velvet cake blended into the demi-glace used as its base. The main is the Platonic form of roast duck breast in Burgundy sauce, served alongside a Jarlsberg doused in Gewürtztraminer. There’s a station off to the side where you can have stale lemon biscuits ground into powder and injected into your nostrils by a spry leprechaun named Bailey O’Keefe. And burnt cracklings and charcoal origami cranes dusted with rosemary adorn the few open swaths of tablecloth.

The mouth is a completely different animal: it’s big and bright and hot, like melons colliding at near light speed to create fusion energy to power an Alpha Centauri probe launched from the Caribbean during Carnival. Not to boast, but with a killer note like that, enough said.

The finish here is transformative—for the drinker. It’s like we volunteered for a new experimental leprosy protocol that’s now lightly irradiating our tongues. It thrums and volatilizes the vocal chords and incinerates our newly-dead tastebuds. “Burn them!” we say, “They’re witches!” But in the midst of our newfound and odd superstitious fervor, we found ourselves soothed and relaxed into oblivion by shiatsu masters rubbing coconut oil on us in the sun of Aruba in January. It’s a wonderful ride, and now we’re…zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
 
 
Rating:
On the scale of wonderful rare things–
The Glen Garioch 21 Year 1994 from The Rare Casks is the truffle—To be clear, this Glen Garioch tastes in no way like a truffle, but it’s as rare a treat, and offers similar depth and complexity. If only I could get my pet pig to dig up bottles of this stuff…

 
 
 
                                                                                    –Stephen
 
 
 
–Our thanks to Abbey Whisky for the sample!
 
 
[The Rare Casks is Abbey Whisky’s exclusive range of single malt Scotch whiskies. You can find the Glen Garioch 21 Year 1994 from The Rare Malts here.]