Glenlivet 40 Year Old review

The Glenlivet 40 Year Old recently became not only the oldest permanent expression from the Speyside distillery to date but one of the most extravagant additions to any core range in the whole of whisky. Seriously, how many distilleries have a whisky of this age as a general release? Very few, is the answer.

The launch of The Glenlivet 40 Year Old

Of course, being this old and rare has its limitations. This single malt Scotch whisky will come in batches, much like Ardbeg 25 Year Old. When it’s here, it’s here, but the first lot we got last month has already sold out. Before I got a chance to taste it and write about it (rude). 

Still, given most people won’t ever get to taste this whisky, I thought you’d like to hear a first-hand account. You know the deal: very old + very rare = very likely to end up in a display case. Also, it costs £4600. That‘s considerably more than Glenfarclas 40 Year Old or Bunnahabhain 40 Year Old Whisky, but considerably less than Balvenie 40 Year Old or the most recent batch of Dalmore 40 Year Old. If you really want a bargain, by the way, this mad bastard is your dram. 

To its credit, The Glenlivet was quite generous with the pours at a tasting I attended last week at The Whisky Shop in London Piccadilly. We also tried the 21 and 25 Year Old but Henry talked about those on the blog recently enough. So let’s get to the main event.

Creating Glenlivet 40 Year Old 

The Glenlivet 40 Year Old is made up of old Glenlivet whisky (circa 35 years) finished in custom casks seasoned with a bespoke blend of oloroso and Pedro Ximenez sherries. Its bottling strength, 46.9% ABV, is hearty for a whisky of this age. 

The single malt is housed in an elongated bottle inspired by The Glenlivet’s original 200-year-old glass silhouette and comes in a copper-coloured presentation container inspired by the copper stills. It also features the profile of founder George Smith (he appears on every single bottle of Glenlivet whisky) and the brand’s signature teal gives it a burst of colour. 

Cask finishing as a theme 

The Glenlivet cask master (a blender by any other name…) Kevin Balmforth is giving us the lowdown at our event. He tells us this project dates back almost five years. He also says the theme of the evening is cask finishing. The 21 Year Old has a triple finish (see below), and the 25 Year Old has a double finish (Cognac and PX). 

“We put a huge amount of work and effort into finishing our whiskies and have done so for the last 20 years. We’ve got a huge amount of experience and expertise. It’s not easy. Operations hate us! Take the Glenlivet 21 for example, it’s a triple finish simultaneously: Cognac, Port, and oloroso sherry,” Balmforth explains. 

He continues: “Think about that. We’ve got to purchase those casks years ahead of the bottling, we’ve got to know the batch size, how many parcels to purchase, and additional costs. Those casks come back to Scotland and we check every single one. Then we create a batch of Glenlivet 21. We can make it around 20 because we’re only going to mature for another year-plus”. 

Balmforth adds: “We fill those special casks at the same time and monitor it very closely as it changes. It’s not a fast process. It’s a slow finish we do. It’s still that Glenlivet style: tropical fruit, banana, pear, honey… When we finish whiskies we don’t transform it into something. We add layers, complexity”.

The finished whisky   

It might seem odd to concentrate on the final few years of maturation when the headline of this single malt is the full length. But how distilleries approach cask finishing often says a lot about them. The best treat it more like a secondary maturation. They implement cask finishing to bring new elements into play. They respect the original liquid.

But there are pitfalls. For some, cask finishing can be a bit of a red flag. It’s been trendy for a while, so marketing types love it. The idea of an “exotic” cask is appealing. But is it necessary, the right thing for the whisky? Then there’s those who use finishing simply to add a bit of last-minute seasoning or to mask a malt that’s gone a bit awry. You know who you are…

I get the impression from Balmforth that he and the team steer The Glenlivet into the former camp. His conversation is considered and technical. Balmforth might be an ambassador for the evening, but he’s a whisky maker truly. At one point, he beams explaining why you can’t condition PX sherry casks in Spain directly. “You have to use oloroso first and then finish with PX as it’s so thick it doesn’t permeate the wood properly”. I love a tidbit.

Balmforth revels in having such a stock of whisky to play with. But it comes with pressure too. He has a legacy in his hands. It’s not just having to maintain the array of already established whiskies, but adding to them. To “innovate and to elevate”, as he says.

That pressure is ramped up when it comes to an older whisky. Maturation is so delicate in these last few years. Let the whisky age too long, the wood overpowers. Get the finish wrong, you’ve wasted decades of promise (and shitloads of money). Ensuring you’re adding new life to an old dog while not removing his charm requires balance. So, how did he do? 

The Glenlivet 40 Year Old review

First, I have to laugh at a tasting that begins with a 21 Year Old whisky, moves to a 25 Year Old, and ends with a 40 Year Old. Nice flex, Glen. You certainly couldn’t confuse the three, not least the star of the show, which is so dark, so immediately commanding, and so very old it’s like popping a Viking longship on the table.

You nose the age first. A musky, antique-quality familiar of spirit of this ilk, as if you found it stashed in an old library. Both nosing and tasting it, the profile is intense but there’s a light bright Glenlivet smile at the backend of it all. This is what makes it a very good whisky. The Glenlivet 40 Year Old feels its age without being defined by it. 

If I’ve said once, I’ve said it a thousand times: nobody wants to lick bark. This is old whisky, yes, and obviously sherried, for sure, but those banana, apricot, almost tropical fruits you get from Glenlivet whisky keep things so vibrant and balanced and beautiful.

Here’s a tasting note. 

The Glenlivet 40 Year Old tasting note:

Nose: It’s immediately prunes, figs, and everything fruity, black and stewed. You need a moment before more comes, then there it is: cigar, nutmeg, somehow both white and dark chocolate, strawberry straws (the candy with the white sugary filling), dried mango and banana crisps… Honestly, after a while, it smelt like ancient Ribena. Forbidden Ribena. The Ribena they spoke of in times of old. 

Palate: The texture is thick and mouth-coating with an oaky, tannic fizz. The palate matches the nose in that it’s deep and rich and sweet but still balanced by those lighter fruit notes of apricots and Conference pears. Then it’s all the old sherry notes typical of this kind of whisky. Like oily walnuts and dark fruits, winter spice, Christmas cake, and liquid you get from a jar of Maraschino Cherries (we all drink that, right?). It’s so rounded and smooth once you’ve been sipping for a while that it’s like sucking on a blackcurrant boiled sweet. Forbidden Ribena sherbet.

Finish: The spice prickles away gently, hints of this and that behind the dark fruit which is now so syrupy and concentrated it’s sticking to my tongue. There are cola laces at the end too. 

The Glenlivet 40 Year Old is currently sold out but more will arrive in the future. In very limited quantities, mind, so be sure to get it while it’s hot… 

Who wants some bonus content? Brand ambassador Sam Alexander set the scene at our tasting with a short history. Here, I’ve it added as a fun addendum for all the nerds like me to enjoy. This story’s got a monarch sipping illicit whisky, flintlock pistols, locomotive lushes… What more do you need?

A short history of The Glenlivet

Glenlivet founder George Smith was like many farmers in the Livet Valley in what we whisky lovers now call Speyside, Scotland. By day, they would tend to the land. By night, they’d disappear into the bothy, tucked away from prying taxman’s eyes, get the stills out and create illicit whisky. 

Smugglers would take this spirit down to the Lowlands or even as exotic places as London. Whisky was drunk, word was spread. In August 1822, King George IV asked for a dram of this famous “Glenlivet” whisky he had heard so much about while on a state trip, even though it was illegal. 

Many of Smith’s contemporaries were happy with this arrangement. It wasn’t broken, they weren’t fixing it. But the government had other ideas. Namely, the Excise Act of 1823. If there’s money to be made in whisky, they wanted a cut. The law made creating a legal distillery much more appealing and potentially profitable. Smith saw an opportunity. He rode for three days to the town of Elgin to get his license to distil whisky.

In 1824, Glenlivet was established as the first legal distillery in the area. There it made what some call “the original Speyside whisky”. Going legit didn’t make Smith a universally popular man, however. Two flintlock pistols were his insurance in case he crossed paths with a disgruntled smuggler. A kind of a “he fixed it, now we’ll break him” deal. 

THE Glenlivet

Smith’s gamble paid off. In 1852, Charles Dickens wrote to a friend encouraging him to try some “Rare Old Glenlivet”. Other distilleries decided to trade on this success, using the Glenlivet name to market their own whiskies. In 1884, George’s son John Gordon Smith won a landmark case by finding a three-letter solution: The Glenlivet. 

Many distilleries still used the suffix -Glenlivet, however, some up until the 1980s. In fact, some WM Cadenhead bottlings show it to this day. In total, some 28 distilleries, including The Macallan, Aberlour, and Glen Grant, marketed themselves this way: Macallan-Glenlivet etc. What JG Smith ensured, however, what that were was no mistaking who The Glenlivet was. Today, few, if any, confuse the name, the distillery, or the whisky.  

The 20th century saw continued success. In 1933, a favourable contract with the Pullman Train Company ensured its luxury steamer only carried miniatures of The Glenlivet. After World War II, it became one of the first single malts of the modern era and is still the largest selling in America today. 

A lot has changed since the days of steamtrains and smugglers. The distillery certainly looks a lot different. But we all know The Glenlivet when we taste it: smooth, light, and full of vanilla, gentle fruit, and subtle spice. Even if the 40 is sold out at the time of reading, there’s plenty of other delicious single malts to enjoy right here.

You can The Glenlivet single malt from Master of Malt. Click on the link in the name for prices, availability, and the best selection in town!

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