“Too much of anything is bad, but too much good whiskey is barely enough.”
— Mark Twain
So we picked up a Glenfiddich sampler pack just before Christmas. It came with a bottle of Glenfiddich 12 year old single malt, a 15 year old, and an 18 year old. Very tiny bottles. Just enough for a shot each. Or a finger, a measure, or however it is you imbibe whisky.
To tell you the truth I have absolutely no memory of the 12 year old. Not because I’m a complete lightweight, but because I didn’t blog about it soon enough after drinking it and the experience left me with no lasting impressions.
Consequently I approached the bottle of Glenfiddich 15 with a certain sense of anticipation. Would it leave me as (apparently) underwhelmed as the 12? Would it be an exciting new step on my whisky adventure? Would the tiny, tiny amount contained within the bottle evaporate before it even reached my lips?
As I always do now, because I’m a whisky-wanker, I gave the glass a good few sniffs before taking my first sip. It didn’t have quite the same welcoming aroma as the Dalwhinnie, but I started getting a pleasing caramel scent eventually. After my first few sips I began to find the Glen 15 a little bolder than the Dalwhinnie, less sweet for sure, but with a really interesting chocolatey aftertaste to it.
Now I’m really looking forward to trying the 18. I’d definitely consider buying a full bottle of the 15, and I’d enjoy whittling it down over a few weeks, but I’m still keen to try a few new tasters first. This is the trade off with the small bottles; you’ll get a relatively affordable way of determining whether a whisky is to your taste or not, but you won’t get to make an old friend of it the way we have with our bottle of Dalwhinnie.