Quote:
Originally Posted by 505Gibbs
Everyone has an opinion and here's mine:
The distillery's 'master blender' is responsible for producing a consistant product. Sampling many casks and choosing those that when they are mixed/blended produce the consistent product like they have bottled in the past under a given 'name' i.e. 12 yr old Glenfiddich. The same would be true if it were Jack Daniels Black label.
True single cask bottlings could vary depending on the quality of the cask or casks involved.
I don't think a distllery, in this case Glenfiddich, would tamper with the method of distillation from batch to batch - just my $0.02! 
I'm curious about the 12 yr that tasted like a 15yr or older?
The 15yr Glenfiddich Solera Reserve, if its this one, has usually received fairly high praise - its one I really enjoy. An additional item to remember is that the age i.e. 12 yr or 15 yr is the youngest age of a cask used in the blend not necessarily the age of all the casks. |
Thanks for the excellent reply and I guess it then goes that when a master blender retires then the next one may end up making choices, for any number of reasons, which may or may not affect the overall flavor of a whisky.
I don't know what that one bottle of Glenfiddich 12 tastes like other than I was surprised to like it so well when every other experience had taught me that I didn't care for it. I do think that particular bottle is over 15 years old due to the time frame of my friends death and the different appearance of the box and label. I know none of that should affect the flavor, which is why I became curious as to what else could explain the difference in flavor.