Convalmore 40 Year (1977), Cadenhead’s
Whisky: Convalmore 40 Year (1977), Cadenhead’s
Country/Region: Scotland/Speyside
ABV: 56.8%
Cask: Butt
Age: 40 years (Distilled 1977, Bottled 2017)
Nose: Delicate but assertive, preserved plums and herbs, ginger, earth, wood, stone fruit, metallic, industrial.
Palate: Medium to full-bodied, herbal and sweet, stone fruit, earth, smoke, industrial, cream and tropical fruits, vegetable garden.
Finish: Long and lingering with tropical fruits, tea tannins, and subtle earth.
Score: 9
Mental Image: Warhammer Night at the Body-Shop
Narrative & Notes: Delicate yet punchy, the aroma was a tale of opposites, with salted plum and ginger ale opening into pickled herbs, earth, pepper, and floral spice. Savory at times with subtle earth, creamy fruits gradually dominated with peach blossom tea and woody peach pits. Iron and metallic, a dirty industrial quality, lurked around the edges with tar and grease. Medium to full-bodied, the flavor profile was herbal and fruity with subtle earthy and grimy elements. Peach blossoms, horehound, wild mint, honey, and a hint of plasticine offered up something between Ricola cough drops and peach tea. Earthy mushrooms and a subtle smoke paired with greasy rags to lend the malt a grimy industrial quality. More time brought out cream with tropical fruits coming on at the end as kiwi, passion fruit, and plump garden tomatoes arrived. The finish was long and lingering with tropical fruits, tea tannins, and subtle earth.
My first Convalmore! I have been interested in this distillery after longingly scrolling past a now sold-out birth year bottle on FineDrams dozens of times. Several good whisky friends have also told me how magical and unforgettable the malt could be. I have not exactly been on the hunt, but my curiosity has been slowly burning for quite a while. When it came time to pick a final dram for the evening at Singapore’s Auld Alliance, I decided to check Convalmore off my whisky Pokédex and share a glass with friends.
This had all the eccentricities and grime I have come to expect of these older malts. I love the contrast of dirt and machine grease with lush tropical fruits and rich herbs— I even really enjoy the herbal taste of Ricola or candy versions of some of the key herbs like horehound, so it is little wonder that I loved this malt. It was not a birth year bottle, sadly, that was not available, but it was something even older and perhaps more complex. Like a couple of the other vintage malts we tried, there was an element of sweet plasticine to the flavor profile that reminded me a lot of resin miniatures for tabletop games (for anyone wondering, yes, I definitely chewed on plastic army men and pens as a kid.)
For those unfamiliar with the long-lost Convalmore, it sits on the same larger campus as Balvenie and Glenfiddich where the buildings are now used by William Grant for storage. The rights to the brand are still owned by Diageo, whose forerunner DLC stopped production in 1985 as the effects of the Whisky Loch continued to deepen, and then sold the premises to William Grant. The distillery was rarely bottled as a single malt, primarily by independent bottlers in the decades after it closed.
