moving from the virus - old glenfiddich

[Ken Gargett]

i ducked in to see how my sister and mother were doing with all this virus stuff - made certain i more than kept my distance and avoided touching things. 

my sister was looking to make her own sanitiser and went to dad’s old alcohol cupboard. There is little but crap there but she found something and showed me. It was a little soft drink bottle – raspberry and lemonade I think – about the size of the little Schweppes tonic bottles. Half full with a clear liquid which is obviously some homemade effort. It must have been there for at least thirty to thirty-five years as Dad would brought it back from one of his trips.

It has a bit of tape with a hand-scrawled note on it. “Raki from Kythira”. i went to Kythira many years ago. beautiful place. amazingly large number of people from both Melbourne and Brizzy are from that little Island. 

anyway, i was poking around the cupboard. i cleaned out most of the good stuff years ago (Dad passed away nearly thirty years ago) and the rest went into the annual plum pudding etc. there was a box for a celebratory bottle of William Grant 25 Year Old whisky. sadly there was the box and nothing else. awful fear it went into a christmas cake. 

a miniature that Dad must have got from Raffles - their Singapore Sling. not sure what that might be like now. 

there was also one of those old jugs of whisky (pic below) - Dad didn't drink but would often be given bottles by grateful clients. i'd never taken any notice of it as it seemed to have been there forever - part of the woodwork. but as i have been doing some stuff on Glenfiddich, i thought that perhaps i should take it and take a look. 

what is really interesting is that it is described as unblended scotch whisky' - in other words, an early malt. it is an 8 year old whisky so probably nothing too special. from what i can find out, it was released as a one-off in 1970. 

out of interest, i googled. first place had a bottle/jug for sale. $600. i might have to go back and see what else is there. 

 

[Meklown]

For some reason I can't see the picture - but judging by your description, the Glenfiddich would have been a pretty cool discovery. While everyone in the past thought blends were the only drinkable Scotch, Glenfiddich was one of those earlier distilleries to bottle their malt as singles. 

It would certainly be interesting to open it and have a side-by-side comparison to a modern Glenfiddich. I am not aware of any OB 8yo Glenfiddich these days but it is possible you may find one from an independent bottler. However, it is also rare that they sell casks to IBs, or even when they do, they don't allow them to disclose (so mostly labelled as "Speyside").

However, note also that jugs and (fancy crystal) decanters are notoriously bad at keeping whiskies over long periods. Many of them have gone bad over 20-30 years. I hope that hasn't happened to yours! 

Personally I have been searching for bottles from the 80s in auction sites. Managed to snag a couple of bottles (10yo Glen Grant, 12yo Glenlivet) that flew under the radar for around US$50+. I am certainly going to compare these with modern iterations concurrently. Would make for a really fun tasting night!