I miss Bart, one of the first e-pals I made when I began posting about whisky on Usenet (I’m dating myself here aren’t I?)
Bart was from Texas and had a soft spot for Glen Garioch (hence his email handle, garioch dot net.) His best friend had introduced him to whisky and then passed after a nasty illness. Bart took to Usenet as a substitute for the banter they used to share over a dram, occasionally sending me samples so he could continue the kibbitz he sorely missed.
Bart worked as tech consultant and when the Dotcom bubble burst in the early aughts, he found himself dipping into his ‘someday’ stash, whiskies he’d purchased at a steep discount and laid aside in the 80s (because no liquor monopoly in Texas.)
Like many before him and since, Bart found a stark difference in whiskies of the same age, bottled by the same distillery, less than twenty years apart. In some cases it was like night and day which stood to reason given the whisky loch of the eighties, an era when distilleries were being mothballed and production scaled back at many others. It wasn’t long before 15 to 20 year old casks of whisky became surplus to requirements and found themselves disgorged into 10 and 12 year old whiskies.
One such delicious surprise was a sample from an old Aberlour 10 Year Old that Bart had purchased roundabout 1990. Clearly drinking a couple of years older than ten, it was also a generously sherried whisky that became markedly leaner upon introduction of Aberlour a’Bunadh, the sherry bomb success story that took a page from Macallan and put Aberlour firmly on the radar of whisky lovers.
While nowhere close to a doppelganger for a’Bunadh at present, these retro 10-year-old Aberlours are always a satisfying find, fulsome and well-spiced, and as easy on the wallet as they are on the palate. The label has also changed considerably, making them easy prey for dusty hunters, though lacking any obvious sex appeal they are almost always overlooked. Shhhh...