Taste testing the £4,600 The Glenlivet 40 Year Old whisky with Cask Master Kevin Balmforth
The generational knowledge that goes into every last drop, revealed...
It’s not often you get the chance to drink something four decades in the making, but that's the legacy-showcasing promise of The Glenlivet 40 Year Old whisky.
In specialist shops now, it’s the product of multiple generations of cask masters and sees hundreds of years of expertise distilled into a very special dram of the good stuff. It sits now as the oldest permanent expression in the Glenlivet line-up, priced somewhere around a cool £4,600 per bottle.
And we’ve tasted it. Not only that, but we have the pleasure of being accompanied for the ride by Kevin Balmforth, the Glenlivet Cask Master who has devoted years to perfecting the liquid’s exceptional finish.
“That’s one of the wonderful things about scotch whisky, you know, that generational legacy,” Kevin tells us. “There are two legacies for me: it's the inventory itself — you have six and a half million casks. That legacy is one of the key things that we have to protect, safeguard and invest into, and nurture.
“And then the second part is the knowledge and expertise. You have to pass that on too. You can have the best inventory in the world, but if you don't know what to do with it, all this knowledge we've got on cask finishing that we’ve learned over the past two decades, is lost. With those two things we can safeguard the 40 Year Old for the next hundred years.”
It’s for good reason that Kevin wants to secure that knowledge — the resulting expression is astonishing. 40 years spent refining and maturing, the new single malt was finished in custom casks from Jerez in Spain, seasoned with a bespoke blend of Oloroso and Pedro Ximénez sherries.
“So about four and half, maybe five years ago, we decided we wanted to do this,” Kevin explains.
“We asked, how do we elevate it? It had to be sherry. Whisky, at this age, is so rich by itself. It's so powerful you need something to move the dial. You need something quite rich in itself to be able to make any sort of impact, to elevate what we've already got. So we decided sherry is the perfect match for this amazing whisky.”
But when you’re working on liquid this long in the making, only the finest will do, and Kevin and the Glenlivet team went to great lengths to ensure its whisky was only paired with the perfect cask mix.
“Everything we buy is really good sherry— we only buy certified sherry,” assures Kevin.
“But we wanted to go one step further than that, we wanted bespoke sherry. So we got some sherry samples in.
“We started experimenting, doing pilots in our sample room, and we came up with what we thought was a perfect mix between PX [Pedro Ximénez] and Oloroso sherries. We went back to our supplier and they conditioned the small number of casks that we needed. These casks were completely unique. There's no other casks that have been conditioned with this sherry that we created that we think would complement The Glenlivet 40 Year Old perfectly.”
Even with the rich influence of sherry, it took some time for its characteristics to fuse with the whisky.
“The finishing process is a slow, slow process,” reminds Kevin.
“People may not realise. After one year it had almost made no difference at all, even with these sherry casks. Not 18 months, not two years — it took three years, three years before the sherry itself, which has quite a strong, rich character, started to have an impact on this amazing liquid.”
It’s worth the wait though. Here’s the tasting notes for The Glenlivet 40 Year Old:
Nose: Rich and fruity aromas, notes of homemade strawberry jam and raisins. Luscious dark cherries are complemented by cinnamon, nutmeg and a hint of sweet, toasted oak.
Palate: Sweet layers of poached plums and charred orange. deeper notes of dark chocolate, braised red apples and sweet liquorice.
Finish: Long, sweet and rich finish with a warming spice.
And don’t be afraid to open it up with a touch of filtered water — Kevin suggests adding a few drops of water, too:
“It’s 46% ABV, it's a little bit stronger. So when we talk about the benefits of adding water, it definitely applies to this whisky: it's super rich, it's super intense. But it’s very delicate, and if you add too much water it’s going to pull it back. But it is at 46% so I'm not against adding a few drops. I think it's quite a good idea to add a few drops, that won’t do any harm. But you wouldn't want to reduce it down below 40%, there you’ll start to lose the balance.”
And balance is what this whisky has, in abundance.
Available now, The Glenlivet 40 Year Old can be purchased from The Whisky Shop, with an RRP of €5,500.
