Glenfarclas 12 Scotch Whisky

In a [Gaelic] word… Glenfarclas 12YO is blasta!

Glenfarclas… sounds like a cussing in Gaelic, doesn’t it? Like if someone stole your sheep you might say: "That old Glenfarclas got the flock out of here!" But if you are a fan of Highland Single Malt Whiskies — and Speyside drams at that — then the word Glenfarclas is music to your ears.

In Gaelic, Glenfarclas means "valley of the green grass"… which perfectly describes its Banffshire location. It was founded in 1836 by Robert Hay, but was sold to the famous John Grant in 1865. The Grant family owns and operates the distillery to this day, making it one of the few remaining independent and family-owned distilleries in Scotland. Glenfarclas produces a range of classic Speyside-style Whiskies with a Sherry influence — all of them tasty and popular with the Whisky "in-crowd" [performs secret Scotch-lovers handshake].

The first thing you need to know is that while it is very common to "finish" Single Malt Scotch Whisky in Sherry casks, typically, most of the aging is done in Bourbon casks, and then transferred to the Sherry casks for the final year or so. Don’t get us wrong, we love it when they do and it adds a wonderful flavor profile.

But the blokes at Glenfarclas don’t mess around. Their Single Malt goes immediately into the Oloroso and Fino Sherry casks on day one… and they leave it there for the duration. In this case, Glenfarclas is aged in those wonderfully premium casks for — you've guessed it — 12 years. We looked it up… "blasta" means "tasty" in Gaelic and Glenfarclas 12 Year Old just "blastas" the crap out of it. Buy, pour, drink. Repeat.