Tasting the Glenlivet Guardians Chapter - Limited Edition

With Iggy Pop's "The Passenger" blasting through the speakers we are opening the sky-blue box containing one bottle of The Glenlivet - Guardians Chapter- bottling. It is a limited edition, number of bottles stays unclosed. Maybe better, because other brands call an edition of 22,000 limited..
The label gives no age statement, alcohol is 48.7% and it's non chill filtered. So far so good. We can't help to keep looking at the bottle (nice thick bottom) and the blue colour. Bottle says: "Please open me".
We cannot resist.

Pouring...
Nice full colour. Although not stated on the label (you need to have an edition for the German or Danish market to be sure), we think this is natural colour.
Now, Glenlivet is a huge distillery with a capacity of more than 10 million litres of pure alcohol a year. It is owned by Pernod Ricard, a French company with 19,000 people working on numerous of brands worldwide. You can imagine these people have their things well organised. It's nice to see that they have a keen eye for a niche product like this Guardians Chapters edition. They could sell bottles of vodka much easier. It is a fine example (to other global players in all kinds of markets) how you can still attract loyal followers. The introduction of the Nadurra (cask strength, no big market product, admittedly one of our favs) can be seen is in the same perspective. We would very much like to speak to the person within Pernod who is responsible for this. We would like to say to keep up the good work. And we can even say this in French. ("Bien fait, continuez s'il'vous plaît!")
Stock price of Pernod is up at € 84,50. That's slightly more than the price you pay for this bottle. We'd prefer the bottle.
By the way: If the stock price falls, you will lose money. If the bottle loses value, you can always drink it: a genuine whiskytip.

That's a fine moment to move one to the tasting notes.
Tasting notes

• Color: deep yellow gold
• Nose: complex, milk chocolate, dried fruits (plum, apricot), orange peel, sherry notes, a little bit of honey, soft oaky tones, freshly baked bread (don't ask)
• Taste: chocolate, spicy-peppery, honey, mandarine, some straight corn bourbon there, rhubarb (cooked with sugar), mashed and cooked apples with cinnamon (moms recipee)
• Finish: the case of barely corn (rub a drop on the back of your hand and smell it), medium long dry.

Conclusion: A very nice dram indeed. Complex, fruity, warm. This is made of barley, yeast and water and you can taste it. We don't give figures but we surely can advice you: go and try it out yourself.

© Whiskytips 2014

Sources:

• Malt Whisky Yearbook 2014 - Ingvar Ronde
• Website of Pernod Ricard