Glenfarclas 1969 Family Cask Release IV

I got a small sample of this and was really looking forward to it. So I did a small Glenfarclas vertical.

Nose: W.O.W.!! Really rich. Very aged, true, and glorious balsamic. Dense strawberries and strawberry jam. Tobacco leaves, chocolate, fruit cake. Just stunningly dense and rich. I could nose this for hours. Possibly some steak tartare and a small pinch of salt. Cinnamon, plum, and very old rum finish it out.

Palate: It'll be hard to live up to the nose. Delightful consistency. Oh my. There's too much wood here. Possibly responsible also for a lemony burst with attendant rough bitterness. Oh no. Thick syrupy strawberry jam extract. All on unsweetened Turkish coffee grinds packed in your mouth.

Finish: Bitter Turkish coffee. A little meaty and only a small amount of fruit. The nose is gorgeous, but it just falls apart in the mouth. I love all the tobacco and coffee, but it's out of balance and the wood and bitterness just ruined this for me. The coffee remains for a long time, but, if I wanted that, I'd just drink the Turkish coffee. The nose is an easy, easy A. The palate, though, is unenjoyable to me. So, I plan to just nose the rest of my sample and then maybe mix it a bit with some of the other Glenfarclas and hope that it takes the best of this and is diluted enough to avoid the woes of the palate. Oh well. I'll score it a 70, out of respect to the nose, but that's about it.

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