Some whiskies you review. Others you simply try to comprehend. The Glen Grant 72 Year Old, distilled in 1948 and bottled by Gordon and MacPhail in 2020, falls firmly into the latter category. I genuinely did not know where to begin with this one, not least because I will almost certainly never taste it again.
Selling anywhere between £20,000 and £50,000 depending on the numbered decanter, this is a bottle that demands you sit up and pay attention, and I was fortunate enough to be granted a tiny measure.
What makes this whisky so remarkable before you even nose it is the maturation. After 72 years it still sits at 52.6% ABV, which is astonishing enough on its own. But the truly unusual detail is the cask itself, an American oak sherry cask filled in 1948. That combination is exceptionally rare for the period. Bourbon barrels in their standard format did not really arrive in bulk until after the Second World War, mostly from 1953 onwards.
So for a single American oak sherry cask to hold one whisky, at this strength, for this long, is close to miraculous. Gordon and MacPhail would have walked past that cask for decades, tried it, and simply thought, not quite yet.
In the glass it is the colour of walnut and chestnut, coating the sides like Coca-Cola syrup. The nose is an aerated wall of complexity, old leather and bright lemon oil at first, moving into a rinsed absinthe and liquorice note that reminds me of a Sazerac glass. Then come the classic British desserts, clotted cream and strawberries, treacle tart, baked brambles, even banana bread and those synthetic foam banana sweets that pull straight from childhood.
The palate evolves for minutes, from mint and anise into waves of milk and dark chocolate, gentle sweet cigar smoke, and that lovely peach iced tea fruitiness that all Glen Grant carries at its core.
Here is my honest confession. When I first reviewed this for Forbes, I scored it around 84, and I did not love it. There was a bitterness, that unmistakable sign of too much oak. Yet after letting it breathe in the bottle for an hour, that bitterness had vanished entirely, replaced by fudge, clotted cream and chewy underbaked brownie. It drinks like 46%, not 52. My score has climbed to a solid 9.5/10. If it had the faintest peated note, it would be a 10.
Would I spend £50k on it? Probably not, even as a fantasy millionaire. But is it a truly remarkable whisky? Absolutely. What would you pay for a single sip of history like this?
To see my full tasting, check out my YouTube video.
Read the full article at Tasting the Glen Grant 72 Year Old: How Time and Patience Transformed My Verdict
