Review by: The Muskox

Last night, me and a friend made another trip to the magical whisky bar from another dimension. One by one, this place will help me tick all the closed distilleries off my list.

Glen Mhor was located in Inverness and operated from 1892 to 1983. It operated as a “twin” distillery with its also-now-dead neighbour Glen Albyn. Despite having closed 40 years ago, a lovely website full of great info is maintained by a few loyal Glen Mhor stans. The distillery has a notoriously pungent character, even by the standards of old-school whisky.This is likely a result of its use of worm tub condensers (like other meaty favourites such as Mortlach and Craigellachie) combined with their own lightly-peated floor maltings.

This particular bottling was recommended to me by my good friend and noted dead-distillery-drinker paulusgaming, and was bottled circa the mid-1980s (or maybe the 70s?) by Gordon & MacPhail.

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Distillery: Glen Mhor.

Bottler: Gordon & MacPhail.

Region: Highlands.

ABV: 57%.

Age: 8 years. Bottled sometime between the mid-70s and mid-80s.

Cask type: Unknown.

Price: N/A. $35 for a pour at the bar.

Color: Natural Color? Non-chill-filtered.

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Nose: About as subtle as a neon wrecking ball. Intense and meaty – seared venison steaks, barnyard fumes, plaster dust, burnt popcorn, and a slight spirit-sulfur character leap out of the glass. There’s quite a lot of sweetness too, actually, with dried dark fruit and rich caramel. Some distant peat, cheddar cheese balls, and road salt.

Palate: Thick and syrupy texture. Arrives sweet with fruit preserves and maple candies, along with salt and another hint of sulfur. The intense worm-tub meatiness quickly takes over, with pepper steak, saddle leather, iodine, and another hint of peat. There’s a woody sweet quality here too, with something like flamed maple planks.

A dribble of water adds more black pepper, some chocolate fudge, roast nuts, and a bit of citrus peel.

Finish: Long, with a horseradish-y spicy kick and some lingering bitterness. Funky dank oak, maple syrup popsicles (it’s a thing, come to Canada), toffee, plums, and blackcurrant jam. Industrial notes here, almost soapy (not in the fragrant/floral sense, but in the biting-into-a-bar-of-Dove sense).

Water keeps everything slightly sweeter, with warm woody spices, birch bark, and fudge. There’s also a more pronounced mineral character here – cast iron and some more road salt.

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Possible SMWS bottling name: “Never mind that shit, here comes Mongo!”

Conclusion: This was completely insane, and also completely delicious. It’s all about the power and the punch, with all the complexities compressed to the same volume. There’s really nothing modern to compare this to directly… it’s like if you extracted all the meat from Mortlach, all the industrial-funk from Longrow, all the nutty-char from AnCnoc, and all the dankness from Craigellachie, then mixed all those extracts together and made a chocolate truffle out of that. There’s this really nice old-sherry character in addition to all the funks, which really helps tie everything together into a semi-cohesive whisky. One possible gripe is the lingering bitterness on the finish, but that seems like part of the fun (and it’s lessened by water).

Final Score: 90.

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Scoring Legend:

• 95-100: As good as it gets. Jaw-dropping, eye-widening, unforgettable whisky.
• 90-94: Sublime, a personal favorite in its category.
• 85-89: Excellent, a standout dram.
• 80-84: Quite good. Quality stuff.
• 75-79: Decent whisky worth tasting.
• 70-74: Meh. It’s definitely drinkable, but it can do better.
• 60-69: Not so good. I might not turn down a glass if I needed a drink.
• 50-59: Save it for mixing.
• 0-49: Blech.