Glen Scotia Victoriana, finding out how old it is

bedlamborn · July 30 2018 at 7:51PM

Glen Scotia has caught my attention the last couple of months and I have been thinking about how old the Glen Scotias Victoriana expression could be. But since it was bottled at 51,5% the ABV doesn't say anything about the age. But then it was released in Sweden in a "NEW" edition. Now it has a Batch number and the release has no 1 in Sweden and it is written that it is bottled at cask strength. And now the ABV is 54,8%. I have other single cask expressions and for example and Edradour 14 year old has the ABV 54,7%. While a Tomatin 11 yo has 58,3%. So maybe it could be approximately 14-15 years old.

But I have a Glen Scotia limited edition 11 years old in cask strength and that one has an ABV of 51,9%. That is quite a low ABV for such a young age. I have also some Glen Scotia limited single casks about 10 year old which are around 56-59%. So with this information the Victoriana could be any age between 8-16 years old.

Has anyone seen an 11 year old whisky have such a low ABV of 51,9%? Much be quite a big evaporation in parts of their warehouses.

hwchoy · August 7 2018 at 5:18AM

@bedlamborn

it is not a linear relationship between cask strength abv and age, even for single casks, due to the idiosyncracies of each cask. you can just look at the Macallan Exceptional Single Cask series to see how the abv and age varies wildly. and that is assuming they have not been recasked or finished.

additionally, unless it is a single cask, it will be a vatting of many casks and this resulting cask strength (some calls it marrying strength) will not be of any indication since the casks are all of various ages.

bedlamborn · August 8 2018 at 6:27PM

@hwchoy

Thanks. It would be interesting to use the Whisky.com database to track single cask release for different distilleries and how it changes depending over the years. Could be a good whisky.com episode.