Glencadam 12 years Portwood Finish

About the Glencadam 12 years Portwood Finish

Glencadam 12 years Portwood Finish is a Highland single malt Scotch whisky from Brechin. The town sits in Angus, between Dundee and Aberdeen on Scotland's east coast. Glencadam distillery has worked there since 1825. This bottling spends twelve years in oak and reaches 46% ABV. Port casks handle the final stretch and give the whisky its name. Angus Dundee Distillers owns the site and bottles the malt. The distillery draws its water from the River South Esk. It runs one pair of stills, a wash still and a spirit still. Each holds 14,000 litres, which keeps the yearly output modest. In 2000 Allied Domecq mothballed the place and the stills went quiet. Angus Dundee bought it three years later and restarted production almost at once. Whisky like this exists because that rescue happened. Brechin kept its distillery. Spice and allspice arrive first, wrapped in vanilla. The port casks show up next as plum and fresh fruit. Underneath sits a malty, cereal weight from the spirit itself. Leather and dark chocolate build as the whisky sits in the glass. A vanilla cream note runs through the middle and softens the edges. The finish stays spicy and dry, with the fruit fading last. Drink it neat and the spice keeps its shape. The port finish is what sets Glencadam 12 years Portwood Finish apart. A second cask changes a whisky more than an extra year of age. Here it adds fruit and colour to a Highland spirit built on lighter lines. You get the distillery character and the cask character in one glass. That makes it a useful bottle for anyone learning what finishing does. It shows the effect clearly, without burying the spirit underneath.