ABV: 40 %
Origin: Speyside
Type: Single malt
Bottles in collection: 0
Emptied bottles: 1
Impression: 2/5

Tasting notes
Nose: This is fruity and floral. At first there are unripe sour green apples and vanilla. There’s a thin maltiness coming from behind and an ethanol cloud on top. There’s a perfumey lemongrass aura surrounding everything and that’s what creates the floral notes. It almost smells like a scented soap. It gets sweeter and maltier with time and honey starts to show after a few minutes. It’s a nice enough nose but it’s not complex or especially interesting.

Mouth: It starts out with a surge of sweetness and then it turns very bitter with oak and malt as main flavours. It’s a bit unpleasant. There is a slight spiciness building up and the fruity and floral notes are still detectable, but the oak and the malt together with the bitterness beat them to the punch. The ethanol cloud is still circling around everything else. The vanilla and honey sweetness has taken a step back and it’s now just a part of the background.

Finish: It starts out where it left off without anything exiting happening in between. It’s still sweet, the ethanol cloud is still there and it’s still bitter from the oak. The maltiness is a bit toned down though. The fruitiness is still in the background and subsides fairly quick in the finish. All that is left in the mouth afterwards is an unpleasant oaky bitterness. This is not a bad whisky, there are just too many corners cut along the way.

Additional information
The Major’s Reserve is the entry level whisky in Glen Grant’s core range. There’s not much information about the content except that it’s aged in ex-bourbon barrels.