Glen Garioch 52 Year Old - 1973 | Whiskyland Chapter 33

Whiskyland's Chapter Thirty Three is a 1973 Glen Garioch, bottled in May 2026 at fifty-two years old and natural cask strength of 53.2%. It dates from the distillery's peated, floor-malted, gas-fired era: Glen Garioch converted its stills to direct gas firing in 1972 and relaunched as a single malt the following year, the vintage of this cask. The spirit went into sherrywood, was married in 2008 and re-racked into a first-fill sherry butt for the rest of its maturation, yielding just 240 bottles. Over five decades on, the sherry and the age carry real weight, yet the old-style peat still holds its line beneath the dried fruit, phenolic, dense and unmistakably from another time. Glen Garioch dropped this peated style in the mid-1990s; this is a rare chance to taste it at full maturity.