Review No.135. Glen Marnoch Limited Reserve Rum Cask Finish
In these next 3 reviews I will covering Aldi’s Glen Marnoch Limited Reserve collection comprising of a rum, sherry and bourbon cask finishes. Finishing is the practice of transferring whisky that has been aged in one type of barrel into a different type of barrel. In this instance when I use the term type I do not mean the size but the type of spirit that has been matured in it previously. So I would assume the rum cask finish version would have been matured for a certain amount of years in barrels that were previously used for bourbon maturation and then transferred to a cask that was used for rum maturation. So here the malt will be taking on bourbon and rum flavours. This practice has been done for many years and I am finding that producers a experimenting with a wider variety of barrels, especially wine casks. I was looking forward to trying these 3 malts from Aldi as I was curious to see how they differed between each type of finish.
Whisky: Glen Marnoch Limited Reserve Rum Cask Finish Single Malt Scotch Whisky, 40%
Nose: Sweet spice and alcohol heat. Caramelised sugar, cherry, vanilla, cola, cinnamon, cloves and tannin
Taste: Very sweet caramelised sugar, vanilla, cinnamon, chilli
Finish: Vanilla, cola and chilli spice
Score: 2
Summary: This is intensely sweet and spicy for my taste. There is also the addition of alcohol heat which doesn’t help. I can see how this can work in cocktails. My experience of rum finished whiskies has not been great, not that I have tried many but I am still to be convinced that rum finishing does anything but make a whisky taste sweeter.
Scoring scale: My scores reflect a balance of the overall experience, availability and cost for a whisky,
1 – not to my preference
2 – tastes fine but does not excite me
3 – more to my liking and would revisit occasionally
4 – very much to my liking and would consider as a regular feature on my whisky shelf
5 – permanent feature on my whisky shelf
Image source: www.aldi.co.uk
