If you enjoy a single malt Scotch, you can credit Glenfiddich for essentially creating and popularizing the category.
To show your appreciation, you might want to bid on some extremely rare bottles from the family-owned Speyside distillery, which are up for sale on Whisky Auctioneer. The online auction is running now through Monday, November 16.
“Scottish whiskies up until the 1960s were largely exported as blends to create a consistent product,” Glenfiddich Global Brand Ambassador Struan Grant Ralph told us on a Zoom call a few days before the auction. “They were drunk quite young and served on the rocks with soda. It wasn’t until Glenfiddich starting showing up that you started seeing the words ‘pure malt’ or ‘single malt.’ We also started defining whiskies with an age statement and terroir and provenance.”
Over 100 expressions are up for bids, covering the Rare Collection, Private Vintage, Vintage Reserve, Pure Malt and Experimental Series ranges, and some releases date from the 1930s.
Among the highlights:
- Glenfiddich 1937 Rare Collection 64 Year Old: The oldest expression ever to be released by the distillery (only 61 bottles produced). This bottle currently has the auction’s highest bid at just under $33,000.
- Glenfiddich 50 Year Old 1st Edition: This 50 Year Old expression was once the most expensive bottle of whisky ever sold at auction (in the ’90s). This one is signed by former chairman Alexander Grant Gordon, the great-grandson of the company’s founder.
- Glenfiddich 1976 Private Vintage #2433 / Concorde: Distilled in the year of Concorde’s commercial launch; this single malt could only be purchased by passengers on the jet.
We were actually able to try a few samples. Two standouts from our limited tasting include a Glenfiddich 1974 (a wonderful thirty-something-year bottling with heavy hints of orchard fruits and a lovely mouthfeel that captures the distillery’s DNA perfectly) and Snow Phoenix, a limited edition from 2010 that came about when a warehouse ceiling collapsed, forcing the creation of a high-character release featuring juice from Oloroso and American oak casks that ranged from 13 to 30 years old.
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