Glen Scotia 10 Year Old - “A True Taste Of Campbeltown”

 Glen Scotia 10 40% abv  - “A True Taste Of Campbeltown”

Barcode:	5016840772262
Price:	In Israel: 150-170 Shekels In the UK: £45-47 (It’s Cheaper in Israel!!!!)
Alcohol Percentage:	40% abv
Maturation:	First-Fill Ex-Bourbon barrels (as stated on the label)
Chill-Filtered:	Yes
Colour Added:	Yes
Kashrus Status:	No Kashrus issues.
Kashrus Certification:	Chatam Sofer Petach Tikva, (imported by Eurostandart Ltd)

Note: I think this will be the last review (at least for a while), in my mini-series on Budget Entry Level, Gateway “Kiddush Friendly” Single Malt Whiskies and comes just in time for Purim. I do hope it’s been useful to someone.

The Kintyre Peninsula

The town of Campbeltown, at the southern end of the Kintyre peninsula, was once considered the most important whisky region in Scotland with the town being dubbed “The Whisky capital of the world”.

As the crow flies, the town seems very near Glasgow, but due to the lochs and mountain regions which pepper this harsh landscape, the often-narrow winding roads need to negotiate around all these obstacles resulting in a journey of over 3 hours to get from Glasgow to Campbeltown. Because of this, Campbeltown even today, has an isolated atmosphere and mentality similar to an island. It really does feel very remote there, at the southern end of the Kintyre peninsula.

Indeed, as you drive down the A83 heading towards the Mull Of Kintyre you would be forgiven for thinking that you are in fact on an island as, looking to your left, to your right and straight ahead, all you see is a thin strip of land and then sea as far as the eye can see.

The Campbeltown Whisky Region

If one was to be cynical then one could say that today, the reason why Campbeltown retains its status as a unique whisky region is only to respect the memory of its former glory. However, I would completely disagree with this. Despite only having three active distilleries left operating in the town, its remote geographical and cultural position, as well as its unique regional flavour profile, fully justifies (in my opinion), its continued status as a separate Scottish whisky region.

Having said that, it is quite depressing to think that at the turn of the 20th century, there were no less than thirty distilleries crammed in and around the town of Campbeltown. There was practically a distillery on every corner of every street and they said that whisky flowed out of this region like a river. Alas, it was a victim of its own success, for as demand began to outstrip supply and stocks of casks to store the whisky ran low, (so the story goes), they began to mature their whisky in practically any kind of cask they could lay their hands on. Inevitably, quality began to suffer.

The urban legend persists (but how factual it is, is a matter of historical debate), that when lack of availability of casks became so acute, they actually resorted to using old fisherman’s herring barrels and as a result, people said that Campbeltown whisky smelled of putrid fish!

Alamy.com

The final nail in the coffin came with the American Prohibition of the 1920s, which saw Campbeltown's major export market collapse overnight and the closure of almost every single distillery, bar a handful, followed soon after.

https://appep.fr/campbeltown-whisky-distilleries-k.html
Red - Closed Distilleries, Green - Remain active

For many years just two distilleries, namely Springbank and Glen Scotia remained in operation. That is until the Mitchell family (founders and still current owners of Springbank), decided in 2004 to resurrect the old closed (in 1925) next door distillery named Glengyle, which was originally owned by the brother of the founder of Springbank. (The brand name “Glengyle” had long ago been sold off, so for legal regions, they call the whisky produced at Glengyle distillery “Kilkerran”, which is the original Gaelic name for Campbeltown)…and then there were three.

The Campbeltown Whisky House Style

As I mentioned above, Campbeltown whisky does have its own flavour style, unique amongst all other regions. It’s slightly peated with a seaweed oily mouth feel, a hint of coastal salty honey influence and fruit pie, with a strong smell of fish. (Only joking! It’s actually not that prominent!). This slight off note has been described by experts as the “Campbeltown funkiness”.

The Campbeltown Funkiness

This Campbeltown funkiness is really difficult to describe but clearly discernible in all Springbank, Glengyle and Glen Scotia spirit, but without a doubt, is most prominent in Springbank.

Without completely trying to put you off, it’s like walking along the harbour where there are fishing trawlers mooring up alongside the key. Aromas of sea-breeze, the sweet smell of burning diesel engine oil mixed with the sweet sulphur of burnt matches (with a slight waft of fresh fish), hovers in the air. If all of that doesn’t sound particularly appetizing, believe me, it is.

Glen Scotia Distillery

Glen Scotia’s reputation was always considered to be a distant second to Springbank and now that Glengyle is active again, it is seen as “the third distillery” in the Campbeltown region.

The distillery’s very distant third place status is not surprising when you consider that it has to compete with the super-iconic, larger than life Springbank distillery as well as her little sister distillery, Glengyle. These two idolised and revered Campbeltown distilleries really do have a cult like following, with thousands of whisky pilgrims making their way down the winding Kintyre peninsula A83 road to worship at the altar of the mighty Springbank stills. This has sadly had the effect of casting a long shadow over poor old Glen Scotia, just a 10-minute walk away, across the road, up the hill and just past the Tesco carpark.

If I had to make a Torah like analogy (but obviously without the Avodah Zara connotation chas veShalom, lehavdil elef alfei alafim of havdalos), let's say a brilliant Talmid Chacham living in 17th century Vilna who has written some wonderful seforim, worthy of great praise, but who just happens to live in the same town as the Vilna Gaon and the Nodah BeYehuda. Had he been in another town then he probably would have been the Rav Rashi or Rosh Yeshiva. That’s Glen Scotia.

Recently however, things have started to change for Glen Scotia’s as their parent company, The Loch Lomond Distilling Company has started a massive investment project to raise the profile of the distillery, and I am pleased to say, that it seems to be working. Slowly but surely, as the quality of the spirit improves with the focus on more and more integrity bottlings, Glen Scotia is starting to get quite a fan base, despite this historical disadvantage.

I must say that I thoroughly enjoyed my time at Glen Scotia distillery back in November 2019, just before the Global Covid pandemic hit. It actually turned out to be the best distillery tasting session I've ever experienced.

We were hosted like Royalty by the wonderful, knowledgeable and super friendly Assistant Distillery manager, Hector McMurchy, who had a lot to do with this being the highlight of our Campbeltown distilleries tour. The Distillery warehouse tasting session consisted of a choice of six different casks. When I wrote ahead of time and pointed out our special needs of no Ex-Sherry or wine casks, Hector was more than accommodating. “No Problem”, he said. He’d line up a series of casks consisting of various Ex-Bourbon and Ex-Rum barrels, peated and unpeated.

After the tasting session, it began to pour down with rain, so we asked Hector if there was somewhere sheltered where we could eat our packed lunch. He very kindly loaned us his office! What a Mensch!

The Author with Hector McMurchy.

The back of my father

The Author with Hector McMurchy.

One of the many special and unique things about Campbeltown distilleries was their complete openness when it came to questions. I found the staff at Springbank, Glengyle and Glen Scotia completely genuine and more willing to answer my questions than anywhere else in Scotland. There did not seem to be any corporate line to tow nor any company policy preventing them from disclosing information. Everyone I talked to there, gave me what seemed to be 100% straight honest answers with no spin whatsoever. I believe it’s due mainly to that same atmosphere of being disconnected from the rest of Scotland, which I spoke of earlier. I found the sincerity and authenticity of their responses most refreshing.

When I asked Hector whether they pour the excess sherry away from First-Fill Ex-Sherry casks, before they fill them with their new-make spirit (which in almost all distilleries would illicit very awkward responses), without any hesitation he told me that they never pour the sherry out of the casks as it is a major contribution to the flavour, which is why they spend so much money on purchasing First-Fill Sherry Casks. Furthermore, he believes that this is standard practice within the industry, even though many would not admit to it!

Packaging

The first thing which struck me was that the front label on the box was a stick-on label. That’s really odd and is the type of thing which an Independent bottler would do to save money on general purpose packaging. However, the blue box is exclusively used for this 10-Year-Old expression so it begs the question, why a sticker?

A Meggilas Esther Case

Unfortunately, even though this Glen Scotia 10’s box is unusually tall, it’s a square cardboard design and not a tube or canister, so cannot be reutilised as a case for a handwritten Meggilas Esther (a handwritten scroll of the Book of Esther, read twice on the festival of Purim).

https://www.ou.org/
A hand-Written Meggilas Esther

www.israel-catalog.com/judaica
A Mezzuah

A Sofer Stam writing a Sefer Torah

It is an interesting phenomenon that many Sofrei Stam (holy men who write Mezzuzos, Tefillin, Sifrei Torah and Meggilas Esther with feather ink pens), often use discarded whisky cans to house their Meggilas Esther claffim (scrolls) for use on Purim, when the Story of Esther and Mordechai is read both at night and the following morning.

Only last week, a Sofer Stam who had written a new Meggilas Esther for a client, realised that the claff upon which he’d written it on was too tall for his collection of empty whisky cases. He there upon contacted me to ask if I had a taller whisky can which I could give him which would do the job. The tallest can I have in my collection is from a Bruichladdich Octomore. Unfortunately, even this turned out to be too short. However, it wasn’t a waisted journey as he asked me to inform him which of the empty cans he had, originally housed kosher whisky and which hadn’t, as he did not wish to use the non-kosher ones. What a Tzadik!

The box has to be tall to hold this very stylish bottle design with a really long neck. The labelling is a very clear classic "old school" design.

Appearance

Whiskybase.com states that E150a caramel colourant has been added to the Glen Scotia 10. If so, in my opinion it is very little. The colour does have a slight tell-tale orang-y tinge to it but the overall colour is a pleasant straw yellow, indicative of maturation in Ex-Bourbon barrels. That’s what it should look like.

Being bottled at 40% abv, I was not expecting any significant tears (or, as some say, legs) after swirling the spirit around in my Glencairn glass. Unfortunately, there were no surprises, as the glass displayed a rather watery consistency with just a few isolated blobs of whisky sticking to the inside of the glass. The liquid immediately fell back into the bell of the glass leaving almost no residual streaks whatsoever, let alone any tears. This shows that a large percentage of natural barley oil has been stripped from the whisky, inevitably negatively affecting the texture and flavour.

Tasting Notes

On The Nose

A slightly pungent hint of salty peat smoke.

Sea Spray

Lemon cake drizzle with honey.

Pineapples

Ripe bananas

That classic “funky” Campbeltown aroma is present but conveyed in a very civilised manner.

Tasting

Salty smoked Lemon Oil

A dry waxy Honey.

Sea-Salt crystals

Lemon meringue pie

Creamy Salty Banana ice-cream

Tin Pineapple on the barbeque.

Soft salty fudge Oaky spices.

Finish

After a wonderful tasting experience, the finish is so disappointing. The flavours seem to abruptly disappear into a thin and watery mist, as if you have just immediately followed up the sip of whisky with a glass of water.

Conclusion

I am shocked by how good this is. The Glen Scotia 10 is bottled at the legal minimum of 40% abv (1) to keep the price down and (2) to make it accessible to the casual drinker who is able to pour this into the glass straight from the bottle without the need to add water.

Despite this, it's quite astonishing how The Glen Scotia 10 still conveys the classic coastal, oily sea water flavour profile of the distillery. Only the thin, watery finish betrays its entry level status, but nevertheless this is a genuine Campbeltown and Glen Scotia experience at a rock-bottom price and if truth be told, I am considering keeping a permanent place for it in my collection as the quintessential example of a gateway single malt into the “funky” Campbeltown style. I give this a very solid recommendation and consider this a truly fine whisky to finish my mini-series on budget Gateway Single Malt whiskies with.