Regular, sharp readers of my blog will notice that this isn’t the first Glen Moray that I have reviewed! Glen Moray is quite affordable for new and returning single malt scotch drinkers. Their bottlings aren’t usually as cheap as the big household blended whiskies like The Famous Grouse; Whyte and Mackay, and Bell’s – but, at least in the UK, your wallet doesn’t take that much more of a beating if you decide to get yourself a bottle of Glen Moray Speyside Single Malt ‘Our Classic’ (see my review of it here).
You already know that I think Glen Moray’s standard bottling of Speyside Single Malt is great. It has been manufactured to be very approachable, forgiving, and respectful to your palate. It’s more marmalade than marmite, and sometimes you just really get a hankering for some marmalade.
Tonight, I focus on Glen Moray 10 Year Old Fired Oak. It’s another one of the distillers single malt whiskies that sits within Glen Moray’s ‘Heritage Collection’.
What makes this different to the standard bottling of Speyside Single Malt ‘Our Classic’ is that the spirit in this bottle has been aged for a minimum of 10 years, and finished in heavily charred virgin oak casks… This interests me.
So, get this – I’ve only recently discovered how much a cask influences the taste of a whisky. It sounds daft, but I didn’t used to pay much attention to the casks a whisky had been matured and finished in. This is the beauty about running a whisky blog; not only can I collate a bunch of rambling blog posts that focus on a whisky that I’m tasting, it also forces me to become more educated about whisky so I can continue to do this blog justice. I make no secret that I’m a novice whisky taster – I haven’t had any formal training, haven’t read any tasting books, and have only had two formal whisky tasting sessions in my lifetime. I review a whisky from the palate of a person who just enjoys the act of drinking whisky.
Glen Moray 10 Year Old Fired Oak can be picked up for around £15 more than the standard Speyside Single Malt offering, and I’m about to find out whether it’s extra money worth spending or not. Fired Oak is slightly darker in the glass and I’ll put this down to the heavily charred casks that it’s finished in, but it could also be due to more caramel colour (E150) being added. Both of the offerings are bottled at 40% ABV, and neither declare that they are not chill-filtered or have added colouring (so we assume that they both have been chill-filtered and had colour added). You can read my review on Laphroaig 10 here to see what chill-filtration and added colour means for our single malts.
As Glen Moray 10 Year Old Fired Oak is bottled at 40% ABV, I will be drinking this without any added water. At least, that’ll be my intention. If I struggle to pick out flavours, then I may go back on it.
NOSE: A non-descript subtle sweetness, bourbon, menthol, a tiny hint of oak – or perhaps pine, grass, and orange. It’s a fairly flat nose compared to Our Classic – there isn’t much vanilla or cream soda compared to the standard bottling, and the aromas are quite compressed and don’t make themselves obvious.
TASTE: Pretty disappointing in all honesty. Similar to the nose, the flavours are so compressed that they don’t make themselves present. The sweetness is deadened, the menthol and the oak are non-existent. It tastes like a watered down bourbon.
SUMMARY: I’m disappointed in this dram. Unlike Glen Moray Speyside Single Malt ‘Our Classic’, I feel this doesn’t do the basics well, and it also isn’t ticking the ‘value for money’ box. There is much better out there at this price point. I feel like I’m missing something here; this passed various gates to be a product. I’d imagine that this passed the lips of quite a few people before it was decided that it was going to market, and they all thought it was good enough to start selling. I’ll try this again in a month or so to make sure my nose wasn’t having an off day and, if my opinion changes, I’ll update this post to reflect my newer thoughts. But for now…
2.5/10
Read my other reviews here.
