Fettercairn 22-Year-Old (2021) 47%

 Fettercairn 22-Year-Old (2021) 47%

Fettercairn 22-Year-Old	Data Sheet
Barcode	5013967016781
Distillery Owners	Whyte & Mackay
Release Year	2020
Price	£199-£250 in the UK, NIS 800-950 in Israel
Alcohol Percentage (abv)	47%
Bottle Volume (cl)	70
Cask Maturation	Ex-Bourbon Barrels
Non-Chill-Filtered	Yes
Natural Colour	Yes
Kashrus Status	No Kashrus issues.
Kashrus certification	None

 

Table of Contents

Ø  Introduction
Ø  Swapping a bottle of Whisky on the “Not Approved” List for a Kosher One
Ø  Comparing the Price in Israel to that in the UK
Ø  E150a or Not E150a? That is the Question
Ø  How To Translate a Whisky’s Batch Code

Ø   Fettercairn 22-Year-Old, 47% abv. The Review

 

Introduction

In the “Conclusion” section of my last article – a review of the Fettercairn 14-Year-Old TravelRetail, I wrote that I’d like to try a Fettercairn that’s been in the cask for a few more years. That being the case, I would try and see if I could get hold of the 17-Year-Old Travel Retail the next time I or another member of my family was going through Heathrow airport.

Well, it’s funny how things happen as within a few days, another opportunity opened up to sample an even older expression of Fettercairn and I ended up paying less than I would have been willing to pay for the 17-Year-Old.

I happened to have a credit note for a particular wine and specialist whisky store in Tel Aviv. (It’s a long story). So, I arrived at the shop mid-morning and was looking around the shelves of an impressive array of Single Malts for something interesting. I was initially thinking of settling on some interesting independent bottlings of Caol Ila, Craigellachie or Mortlach they had, when looking up, one item suddenly caught my eye.

Sitting on the top shelf was the familiar look of a white box with a green marble like band running round the bottom and top of it, and with a unicorn badge on the front. Yep, it was Fettercairn all right but this box was massive! I estimated that it was perhaps twice as large as the box holding the 14-Year-Old. On the front of the box was the statement “Aged 22 Years”, printed in gold lettering below the distillery name. It was then that I noticed the price tag-tag below it. It was marked up at a discounted price of NIS 800 (£185), reduced (so it claimed), from NIS 950 (£220).

Even on “discount”, that’s an awful lot of money to blow on one bottle but my immediate thought was, if I used my credit note to reduce the cost, then this Fettercairn 22-Year-Old would actually make an interesting follow-up article to the 14-Year-Old. I thereupon managed to negotiate what I thought was a very fair price and drove home excited with the prospect of reviewing this as soon as possible. The question is, would I live to regret this decision?

 

Swapping a bottle of Whisky on the “Not Approved” List for a Kosher One

As I was already going to this wine and specialist whisky shop, I took opportunity to do a favour for a good friend. On his way back home from the UK to Israel, he had bought a bottle of whisky (as it happens, at the exact same Heathrow airport whisky shop that my wife had bought the Fettercairn 14), with the specific intention of donating it to his shul for an upcoming kiddush.

Unfortunately, being in a rush to get to his gate on time, he had not checked the kosher status of the bottle sufficiently and completely missed the cask details printed at the back of the canister which stated that this Single Malt had been matured in Ex-Sherry casks. Being that the shul has a strict policy that only permits “Kasher LeMahadren” whisky to be consumed on the premises, he asked me if there was anything that could be done about the bottle he had brought home by mistake.

I knew that this shop in Tel Aviv that I was going to happens to buy second-hand bottles of whisky in exchange for a credit note towards something else in stock. The question was, would it be halachically permitted to take my friend’s bottle which we both considered to be “not kosher” and get the shop to swap it for a strictly kosher Single Malt so that he could use it for the shul kiddush?

The question brought up a number of complex halachic issues so I decided to ask my dear friend, Rav Akiva Osher Padwa Shlit”a, a major Posek in London, for his opinion.

The following is the summery of the Rav’s response to me:

Yes, you may sell a bottle of whisky matured in stam yeinum (wine) casks to a liquor store or exchange it for another whisky (that had not been aged in stam yeinum casks), as opposed to selling or giving it away to an individual Jewish person which I would not recommend you do. This is regardless of what this individual Jew personally holds, or whether he is even religious. However, there is no issue about selling it or giving it to a liquor store, even if the store-owner is Jewish.

(If anyone would be interested in the full version, they can write to me).

So, based on this psak, I took my friend’s bottle of Single Malt to the shop with me and the store-owner very kindly agreed to exchange it for another bottle. In this case, an Old Pulteney “Harbour” (which I have previously reviewed).

My friend was very grateful when I handed him the new bottle of whisky.

 

A Few Details About the Fettercairn 22-Year-Old Release

The Fettercairn 22-Year-Old was first released in 2020, along with the 16-Year-Old “Experimental” annual release. However, being an expensive premium product with a price tag of around £240 and coming from a more or less unknown distillery, this 22-Year-Old never really elicited much fanfare when it came onto the market. In fact, in its five years of existence, there is still only one solitary video review for this 22-Year-Old on YouTube. As mentioned in my previous article about Fettercairn, there was a major revamping of the entire Fettercairn range in 2024, so the current 22-Year-Old might not be exactly the same to pre-2024 batches. The Fettercairn 22 is still however bottled at 47% abv and is Non-Chill-Filtered but no mention on the box or label as to whether it’s Natural Colour.

 

Comparing the Price in Israel to that in the UK

The RRP in the UK hasn’t changed much in five years. Fettercairn’s official website currently quotes a price of £250.00 (NIS 1,080). However, the major online whisky shops are selling this for between £199 and £244 and I also noticed that second-hand auction prices for this 22-Year-Old are even cheaper.

Being it’s the case that Israeli prices for core-range expressions are usually around 25-30% higher than in the UK, and rare higher aged Single Malts can typically be marked up as much as 50% to 100% more than UK prices, it is a bit odd that the shops here in Israel are selling this Fettercairn 22 cheaper than in the UK.

Israeli shop prices for this bottle range from as high as NIS 1,050 (£242) down to NIS 800 (£185). In other words, the lowest Israeli price is some £58 cheaper than the UK RRP. That’s quite a substantial difference. What this shows is that there are sometimes other factors involved besides Israeli government taxes that will determine the retail price. In this case, I think there are two factors coming into play at the same time to reduce the price of this Fettercairn 22 here in Israel.

The first reason is because no one besides a handful of whisky connoisseurs have ever heard of this distillery here in Israel. In other words, there’s no market for Fettercairn here as yet. The second factor is that it would seem that the market in the UK and Europe perceives this Fettercairn 22 as frankly, grossly overpriced, as might be indicated by the winning bids that are well below the RRP at whisky auctions, as well as online chat about these ultra-premium priced Fettercairns.

Furthermore, I don’t think that it’s a coincidence that (as far as I’ve checked), all the bottles of Fettercairn 22 happen to have arrived here in Israel not directly from the main exporter in the UK but have actually originated from a re-distributer in Madrid, Spain. My guess is that rather than letting them sit in Spain gathering dust, some deal with an Israeli importer has been made to offload these bottles onto the Israeli market at a discounted price. It’s only a theory though but it’s the only way I can explain the lower price.

 

E150a or Not E150a? That is the Question

One might reason that if they have taken the trouble to state Non-Chill Filtered on the label but NOT Natural Colour, then that kind of indicates that it does indeed have some caramel colour added. Indeed, both Whiskybase and Whiskystats, usually pretty reliable sources, state that the Fettercairn 22-Year-Old, when released in 2020, does indeed have E150a Caramel colour added to it.

Despite this, checking on the official Fettercairn Distillery website, it clearly states that the Fettercairn 22 is both Non-Chill Filtered and Natural Colour.

However, it’s important to point out that this statement applies to batches after Whyte and Mackay revamped their entire range back in 2024, so their current statement may not necessarily apply to batches before that time.

So, the next question I had was, whether my bottle was from a new batch or pre-2024? In order to find out, we are going to have decode the printed Batch code, found towards the bottom of the bottle.

How To Translate a Whisky’s Batch Code

Barely legible, it took me a minute to locate the Batch Code but once fond, I noted down the text.

As I hope you can see, the First series of characters reads: L1152

The “1” of the “L1” mean either 2001, 2011 or 2021. Being that it was only released in 2020, we can assume that the L1 in our case means 2021. The remaining “152” means the 152^nd day of the year. In other words, the production date was 1^st June 2021.

So, despite the fact that the salesman in this Tel Aviv Wine store assured me that they had just got this whisky in (which could well be true), it looks like I’ve just purchased a Fettercairn from over 4 years ago and therefore my bottle could possibly include some Caramel colouring. Moreover, the fact that my bottle is so old buttresses my theory that these bottles might have been sitting around, unsold and gathering dust in a Spanish warehouse for years.

Despite all the circumstantial evidence, I decided to try writing to Fettercairn distillery and asking them. I emailed the distillery and to my surprise, they answered me literally within a few minutes.

Email:

Emma Simpson <Emma.Simpson@whyteandmackay.com>

Wed 19 Nov, 18:14

to me

Hi Reb Mordechai,

I've had a quick response from the team who have confirmed that based on the code you provided, your product was bottled in 2021.

They also confirmed that our Fettercairn 22-Year-Old has always been produced to natural colour and non-chill filtered.

I hope this helps - please don't hesitate to reach out if you have any other questions.

Many thanks,

Emma Simpson

Fettercairn Distillery, Distillery Road, Fettercairn,
Laurencekirk, AB30 1YB

 

Fettercairn 22-Year-Old, 47% abv. The Review

Packaging

The bottle and artwork are identical to the 14-Year-Old. However, the box that this 22-Year-Old comes in is a lot posher and frankly, massive. Instead of thin card, we have thick solid cardboard with a magnetic lid to boot.

The box is far too big for the bottle. Its oversized dimensions, no doubt purely a marketing ploy in an attempt to show just how exclusive, premium and luxurious this product is. It’s not as bad as the over-the-top packaging of higher-end Tullibardine releases mind you, but still a bit annoying, as it takes up far too much room on my already overcrowded shelves.

ABV Test Reading

I have been taking some test sample tests on my newly purchased Portable ATC (Automatic Temperature Compensation) Alcohol Refractor. As a teaser for a forthcoming article, let me just say that when I tested this Fettercairn 22-Year-Old, rated at 47% abv, I got a reading of only 44% abv! (Curious). More about this soon.

Appearance

A beautiful Bronze Gold colour, and (now knowing that this is natural colour), the kind of shade we would expect from a whisky matured in quality Ex-Bourbon barrels for 22 long years.

Swirling the liquid around my Copita glass and then stopping to examine the tears, I see globules of alcohol sticking to the inside of the glass. That’s a good sign that the barley oils have remained in tacked thanks to non-chill filtration.

Aroma

Surprisingly for a 22-Year-Old, it still has quite a bit of an alcohol nip on the nose. I found that I had to add 1-2 teaspoons of water to bring out all those aromas (and flavours).

Without water, it has a sharp white pepper sting on the nostrils. Once water is added and you wait a few minutes, this Fettercairn develops the most wonderful nose. I would seriously recommend you spend some minutes appreciating the many different aromas this whisky has to offer.

It initially reminded me of a slightly effervescent pineapple juice with a splash of soda. Then the bold and satisfying smell of sweet wood and polished furniture kicks in.

According to Google’s “AI Overview”, the scent of furniture stores comes from “volatile organic compounds” or VOCs, mild formaldehydes evaporating off treated polished wood. In small quantities, most people find this smell very pleasing, giving them a warm comforting and homely feeling. Associated with VOCs is the scent of Beeswax polish and a strong smell of rich honey taken straight from the hive. Once your nose becomes accustomed to these aromas, you become aware of an enchanting fresh high quality leather smell with a hint of sweet adhesive (sweet solvent), like the pleasing smell of new English Oxford shoes. It’s a clean, earthy and slightly sweet musky smell. Again, a hint of muskiness can be very pleasing to the nose.

Now we get to the fruits. Luscious yellow apples, pineapple jam tarts, apricot jam, stewed peaches and spices. Warm, soft white pepper, bay-leaves and cooked ginger notes.

Mouth Feel

(With water), the mouth feel is thick and oily. It coats the mouth with tangy yellow fruits, honey and soft silky wood tannins.

Taste

Cooked Apricots and plump sultanas (golden yellow raisins) in treacle and honey. Apple Treacle pie. Pecans. Walnuts. Spicy Ginger. Ginger Toast. Medium brewed English Tea.

My son said that he got tinned pears. Funnily enough, the only YouTube review on this 22-Year-Old by “WhiskyJason”, also mentioned tinned pears.

Finish

Medium to long finish. Lots of barley oil left on the tongue but with a hint of turpentine (paint stripper). Tart, baked cooking apples and pineapple, apricots and golden sultanas, wet treacle and crusty pastry, Honey, fresh wood varnish, white pepper, ginger and other slightly hot spices (even with plenty of water added).

Conclusion

It’s good whisky but the outstanding full rich and complex aromas you get on the nose that promise so much, do not translate through to the taste. Even adding water to the point of drowning it, still does not totally remove that slight white turpentine sharp spirit off-note I get.

I wouldn’t have minded had it been a 14-16-Year-Old, but at 22-Years and at this ultra-premium price-tag, both the smelling and tasting experience needs to be exceptional and in my opinion, it simply isn’t, even if you enjoy a slightly funky style.

Again, I must state that it’s a lovely quirky whisky with a strange combination of flavours one would associate with old whisky, mixed with flavours I would also associate with very young under-matured liquid. Perhaps they vatted some 22-Year-Old whisky matured in high-quality casks with some 22-Year-Old whisky matured in poor worn out ones? (Just my opinion).

Accordingly, I have no hesitation whatsoever in giving this a solid 100% non-recommendation. Why? Because it’s ridiculously overpriced for what it manages to do.

If it were £120-140, I’d say it was perhaps worth the money if you have the disposable cash and a love for peculiar, slightly funky, “off the beaten track” style of single malt, but I cannot find any justification whatsoever for its skyscraper £200-£250 price-tag. This is especially true when you consider that Fettercairn as a brand is quite obscure and lacks a premium reputation. It isn’t as if the distillery is “the talk of the town”.

I was reading on a Patreon whisky chat forum about these fake luxury brands where they are selling poor, mediocre whisky for Rolex like prices. For all intents and purposes, they are scams, aimed at whisky drinkers with more money than sense. Despite its oversized box and crazy price-tag, I don’t think this Fettercairn 22 is one of them, as it is actually decent whisky, just ridiculously overpriced. That doesn’t placate my feeling of disappointment and the feeling that I have been duped in some way. I really expected this whisky to be utterly amazing, and it wasn't.

In hindsight, I have to admit that I really regret having stretched my whisky budget to near breaking point in order to obtain this Fettercairn 22. My enthusiasm got the better of me in this instance. I should have gone for those independent bottlings they had in the shop and waited patiently for someone to bring me the 17-Year-Old from London. Now I won’t bother. The 14-Year-Old and now this 22 have kind of put me off Fettercairn, at least for the while.