Situated on the edge of Hyde Park, in London’s monied and historic Belgravia neighbourhood, the Peninsula Hotel cuts an imposing figure. The opulent nine-storey structure was completed in 2023, and boasts 190 rooms, a ballroom, private cinema, a two-Michelin-starred restaurant, and a rooftop terrace with panoramic city views. The design scheme is inspired by the ‘craftmanship’ in classic British aviation and motorsport. It is a fitting place to talk about something grand — in this case, the newest addition to Glenfiddich’s Grand Series.
Malt master Brian Kinsman is a little late for our meeting in the hotel’s Brooklands bar; he has been conducting tastings with staff (Glenfiddich expressions on offer include the 40 Years Old Cumulative Time, from 2022’s Time Re:Imagined series, and the Archive Collection 49 Years Old 1973, which is a cool £3,900 per 50ml serving).
It is several months before the Grand Series whisky under discussion will launch, but the project has been in the pipeline for almost a decade. It began with a delivery of wine casks from Bordeaux, France, during a boom time for experimental cask filling (in particular wine casks) at the Dufftown distillery.
“Sometimes you put [whisky] into a wine cask [and] because it’s so active, it goes maybe slightly disjointed at the beginning, the cask slightly dominates,” Kinsman explains. But after 18 months in these Bordeaux casks, he says the whisky in question “settled down into this beautiful, rich, fruity, fleshy-fruit type whisky and it’s just got better and better… the colour, the flavour, the aroma, everything about it is really indulgent.”
This indulgent new dram is the 31-year-old Glenfiddich Grand Château, a synchronised next step in a range of limited editions that prove how masterfully the distillery can manage both age and cask finishing.
The Grand Series has its origins in the early 2000s with the Glenfiddich 21 Years Old. The expression is matured in Caribbean rum casks, a format that was introduced in about 2003. “Rum casks are quite hard to get in a consistent fashion,” Kinsman says, referencing the more extreme climatic conditions and more flexible approach to maturation compared with, for example, Scotch whisky. To ensure consistency in quality and supply, Glenfiddich took the novel step of ‘making’ its own rum casks by buying a tanker-load of rum from the Caribbean and filling it to cask on site. (In the past, Glenfiddich sold the rum on to blenders; now it is used to make William Grant & Sons’ Discarded banana peel rum.)
In 2016, the Glenfiddich team started to tentatively investigate expanding the concept that it had pioneered with the 21 Years Old, using whiskies of a similar age to show off its experiments in maturation. At this point Kinsman was already experimenting with a number of wine casks, leading to releases such as Winter Storm, which used Canadian ice wine casks, and the Age of Discovery 19 Years Old Red Wine Cask Finish. Then, he had an opportunity to purchase a batch of cuvée casks; having been used for in-cask fermentation, he describes them as “quite active”, with a distinctive flavour profile.
Single malt was finished in these casks for three to six months, and bottled as Glenfiddich Grand Cru, the debut release in the Grand Series, in 2019. By this time, the series’ second release, Grand Couronne, was already in the works; the 26-year-old single malt was released in 2021 after a two-year finishing in Cognac casks to achieve what Kinsman calls an “indulgent chocolatey richness”.
The team members were simultaneously working on an exclusive release for Asia, where Glenfiddich has a strong following and a showcase for old and rare whiskies via its Distillers’ Libraries in countries such as Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore, Indonesia, and South Korea. Bottled at 22 years old, the base whisky spent time in European oak oloroso casks before being finished in Palo Cortado sherry casks.
For the last Grand Series release in 2023, Glenfiddich moved from Europe to Japan to seek its wood. The 29-year-old Grand Yozakura was finished for about six months in casks that formerly held awamori. Precious little of this Okinawan rice-based spirit is matured in oak (the vast majority is rested in earthenware pots), adding an extra layer of distinction. Kinsman admits he was “chuffed” with Grand Yozakura, noting that the awamori casks added a textural richness that fitted them for an older spirit with more tannin, sweetness, and intensity.
Unlike the series’ previous cask-finished releases, Grand Château underwent a much longer secondary maturation: the Bordeaux casks were filled with 22-year-old spirit nine years ago. “It was at the height of when we were trying lots of different things,” Kinsman explains, adding that these particular wine casks came from a great (albeit unnameable) source, and had been exceptionally well coopered. As with other Glenfiddich experiments, they were filled without an express purpose, but Kinsman says he has been singing the praises of this whisky for most of the past nine years. He recalls tasting it with senior leaders at William Grant & Sons during a dinner at the Serpentine Gallery in London’s Hyde Park a few years ago, when it was already “such a nice whisky”.
When dealing with whiskies of this age, and particularly one that had been in secondary casks for so long, choosing the right moment to bottle is crucial — but it can also be an imprecise science. “It is almost a beauty and a nuisance,” Kinsman says. “You would know if you’d missed it, and that would be terrible. I would say that incrementally it changes less and less.” Of the Grand Château, he adds, “It would take more age — it could go to 32, 33, and I’m confident it wouldn’t collapse, I think the flavour would keep building — but certainly, as it stands, I don’t think there’s any harm in putting it into a bottle.”
While premium limited editions are commonplace now for many Scotch distilleries, and the Grand Series is not Glenfiddich’s only such collection, the distillery’s history casts the bottling of such high-calibre whiskies in a different light. This was the company that introduced single malt Scotch to the world with its Straight Malt Whisky, launched by pioneering brothers Sandy and Charlie Grant Gordon in 1963, and which has claimed the title of the world’s best-selling single malt Scotch whisky multiple times in the past decade.
The expressions in the Grand Series are far from ‘everyday whisky’. Retail prices range from £260 for Grand Cru, to £500 for Grand Couronne, to upwards of £1,500 for Grand Yozakura. Grand Château is set to be in a similar ballpark, at £1,550. For Kinsman, however, they are an important signpost back to its roots.
“Aspirationally, they shine a light back on what we do at our core,” he explains. “We still take every bit as much care with 12 Years Old, with the 15 Years Old Solera, with the 18. All the craft and knowledge we’re putting into making these limited editions is absolutely being employed on the wider range.”
He adds that some vendors stocking Glenfiddich have noted a “halo effect” on the core whiskies in the presence of a Grand Series bottling. “It’s reassuring that you’re drinking a whisky that can make that… even though you maybe can’t order it in a bar, you’re still participating by having the 12 Years Old, and being part of that whole single malt range.”
Regardless of the volume or price point of the whisky, Kinsman says every expression must be “recognisably Glenfiddich”. He would also like to see the connection between the core and limited-edition ranges maintained in the way people enjoy them. Acknowledging that releases such as Grand Château hold appeal for collectors, he says he ultimately wants people to drink Glenfiddich’s whiskies.
With William Grant & Sons still being wholly owed by the Grant Gordon family, the company and its brands — which as well as Glenfiddich include Balvenie, Grant’s, and Hendrick’s Gin — maintain a strong sense of identity. Kinsman feels that one of the greatest legacies of this uninterrupted ownership (137 years and counting) is a “singular focus on the future and the long-term nature of whisky”.
“We are fortunate where we do have some really nice old whiskies… we’ve got this legacy of stock and the ability to try things, and then alongside that, we’ve got… a tremendous freedom to just experiment,” he says. “Certainly, for the 20-plus years I’ve been involved in the blending team, we have been very open to bring in new casks, do things, try them without a purpose almost, [and] just learn. So, I have been able to with the team build up a tremendous amount of knowledge about what happens when you take this age of Glenfiddich into this type of cask.”
He namechecks the 15 Years Old Solera as an example of how successful such experiments can be. From filling the first 36,000-litre vat in 1998 — at a time when solera vatting had been all but abandoned in Scotch whisky production — and releasing just a few batches a year, it grew to become Glenfiddich’s second best-selling whisky after the 12 Years Old.
Speaking in March, Kinsman says he is unlikely to taste the Grand Château again before the first launch events to promote it in September, by which time he’ll be working on the blending team’s next project. He is anticipating some first-night nerves: “That first round of samples goes out and you hope for the energy in the room to build… but hopefully it will be well received.”
Tasting Glenfiddich Grand Château
Nose: Strawberries and clotted cream. Vanilla pod, cinder toffee, shortbread, and very rich, oily orange peel notes. Raspberry coulis and meringue. Walnut shells, scone dough, and a little hibiscus. With time, fragrant apple and pear.
Palate: Deeper strawberry notes, like cordial. Elderflower, red apple, pear drop, and lemon and lime peels. Buttery digestive biscuits and fig jam. Black pepper, clove, and a hint of allspice. High-cocoa dark chocolate. Hints of polished wood and leather. Delicious fruit and spice from the wine cask. Later come strawberry jam and clotted cream.
Finish: Red fruits and pastry dough return with hints of frangipane and fresh mint.
Comments: An exquisitely aged single malt that has maintained its fruity vivacity and been further enlivened through its long secondary maturation.
