After checking out the mildly disappointing Glenlivet Cpatain’s Reserve let’s have another Glenlivet to balance the scales. In the last year we’ve seen a few interesting releases coming from an unnamed Speyside distilleries, and some are rumored to be from Glenlivet. They have similar age and strength so maybe they are coming from the same casks parcel?

One of those releases is the Dramfool special bottling for Spirit of Speyside 2019, named Elderly Elvis Tilting

Bruce, the man behind Dramfool love words game and anagrams. We reviewed a Lagavulin called Like a Villian and there was another Glenlivet called Give n Tell. Anyway, given those facts you can easily find out that the bottling name is an anagram for Glenlivet Distillery.

So we have a 25 year old Glenlivet from ex-bourbon barrel. Only 109 bottles at 51.2% were released, non-chill filtered and no caramel was added.

Dramfool Elderly Elvis Tilting (Glenlivet) 25 Year Old (51.2%, £135)

Nose: Clean and richly sweet, green apples and pears, sweet barley, pink grapefruit, melon, pear drops and red apple peels. After a few minutes more tropical fruit and extra grapefruit juice.

Palate: Spicy and a bouquet of green and tropical fruits, unripe melon, kiwi, mango, passion fruit, apples, grapefruit juice, honey, barley, cardamon and a bit of white pepper, subtle oak spice.

Finish: Medium length, drying, grapefruit, a lot of green and tropical fruits, melon, apples and lemon juice.

Thoughts: Well, that was a unique experience. I don’t recall another intense and fruity dram with so little cask influence in the last few years. And it works out really good as it’s very tasty. It could have been more complex with a little more cask impact but you gotta live with what the cask gives you.