Glenfarclas 10 yo (Welcome to the family, we're glad that you have come to share)

Glenfarclas is an interesting distillery. It is still family run, and it recently released 43 bottlings from casks dating from every consecutive year from 1952 onwards (known as the Family Casks). These whiskies are on my to-taste list, although the pricing ensures that I'm only drinking a few of the 43. But what a fantastic thing it would be to try each whisky in turn!

Anyway, Glenfarclas whiskies tend to be sherry beasts, classic Speyside. This one is their official 10 year old flagship bottling, and given the dark sweet spiciness of the whisky, I decided I would pair this whisky with cakes and pastries. Something like fruitcake ought to go particularly well with this one.

Extract from my tasting notebook:

Glenfarclas 10 yo (OB)
Single malt - Speyside
Amber, tinge of pink
43% ABV

Nose: Sherry sweet, clotted cream and fresh milk, oranges and dried apricots. A little oak underneath.
Mouthfeel: Watery. Very liquid but not thin.
Tasting: Sweet. Big hit of spice, cinnamon and nutmeg. Strawberry jam, vanilla cream, tannin. Cream tea!
Finish: Medium to long. Loses intensity quickly, but hangs around. Spice cake and orange peel.

And so on to the experiments.

1. Welsh cakes (butter scones with raisins and nutmeg)

Very fragrant; the cream notes in the whisky combine well with the butter in the cake. The raisins are rounded out and made more intense by the fruit notes in the whisky. I've lost the strawberry jam though, as well as the spiciness in the finish. Not bad, but here the equation is simply raisins + fruit = raisins. A bit one-dimensional.

2. Waitrose tropical fruit cake (contains walnuts, glace cherries and pineapple)

The cake is very sweet, and hence cancels out all the sweet fruity notes in the whisky. The whisky begins to taste of cream and milk, with undertones of salted butter and black tea. Some bitter flavours also appear. The whisky takes on some maritime character, a bit like an Old Pulteney.

3. Dutch syrup waffles (caramel in a thin pastry shell)

The milky creamy notes in the whisky combine well with the caramel. Something fruity remains - spiced apple, cherries? Definitely some dark fruit in there. There's a slight textural change. The whisky becomes thicker somehow, like syrup, as it mixes with the caramel. The fruity notes really come out with this one.

4. Marks and Spencer Belgian chocolate brownies

The chocolate in the brownie has changed. Instead of being sweet, it's now salty and bitter, something like dark unprocessed cocoa brick. The whisky becomes salty sweet, like the Old Pulteney I mentioned in (2). Not a great combination, although the brownie and whisky are quite tasty on their own.


I think the fruitcake worked best with the Glenfarclas. It was complex, nuanced, and the whisky changed character into something else entirely. A real education for my (untrained) palate.