Glenfarclas Family Cask 1953, cask 1675, is a 58-year-old single malt drawn from one sherry butt and bottled at natural strength. It is among the oldest vintages the family has released under its own name.
About This Whisky
Cask 1675 is a sherry butt filled in 1953 and bottled on 26 June 2012, at 58 years old. It was bottled at a natural 49.6% ABV and produced 408 bottles. Whisky this old keeps its strength only in a sound cask kept in cool, damp warehousing, and the sherry wood has had almost six decades to shape it.
Tasting Profile
- Nose: Old oloroso, polished leather, dried orange, beeswax and a faint note of cedar.
- Palate: Deep and mellow, with raisin, walnut, dark honey, old-fashioned fruit cake and soft oak tannin.
- Finish: Very long, with dried fruit, cocoa and antique wood spice fading slowly.
Serving & Food
Open it for a gathering that deserves it and pour small measures into thin-walled tasting glasses at room temperature. Let the glass sit for ten minutes before the first sip. Nothing more than a few shelled walnuts or a sliver of aged Parmigiano is needed alongside.
How to Enjoy
Rare-whisky enthusiasts and anyone marking a 1953 anniversary with a bottle drawn straight from the family's own stock.
Product Details
Distillery: Glenfarclas
Series: The Family Casks
Vintage: 1953
Bottled: 26 June 2012
Cask Number: #1675
Cask: Sherry butt
Age: 58 years
ABV: 49.6%
Outturn: 408 bottles
Volume: 700mL
Origin: Scotland
Region: Speyside
About the Distillery
Glenfarclas stands at the foot of Ben Rinnes near Ballindalloch in Speyside. Tenant farmer Robert Hay held the licence from 1836, and on 8 June 1865 John Grant bought the farm and distillery. The Grant family have owned it ever since and it is now run by the fifth and sixth generations, one of very few independent family distilleries left in Scotland.
Its six stills are the largest on Speyside and are fired directly by gas. Steam heating was tried in 1981, but the spirit lost weight, so direct firing came back. Most whisky rests in European oak casks that held oloroso sherry, in traditional earth-floored dunnage warehouses. In 1968 it released Glenfarclas 105, an early cask-strength single malt, and in 2007 it launched The Family Casks, one single cask for each vintage.