Welcome back to the Whisky-Online blog, and we bring you glad tidings - this news has been under strict embargo, but we can now tell you about not one but FOUR great new Glenallachies! First up is the ninth edition of Glenallachie 10-year-old Cask Strength. It’s always great to get the latest batch of this splendid dram, which is one of the most consistently great value cask strength Speysides of its age on the market. The fourth batch of this whisky, you’ll remember, carried off the top prize of World’s Best Single Malt Whisky at the World Whisky Awards in 2021, and the good news is that the magic formula has remained unchanged ever since.  Glenallachie 10-year-old Cask Strength is assembled by the distillery’s head honcho Billy Walker from a sherry-dominated cask recipe featuring Pedro Ximenez and Oloroso sherry casks leavened by a small proportion of virgin oak and Rioja wine casks, and this 9th edition weighs in at a hefty 58.1%. If you can find a better bang for your buck cask strength Speyside at this price we’d love to see it. The other three new Glenallachies we’re talking about today are from the Third Release of Glenallachie’s Virgin Oak series. Despite having been at the top of his game for what seems like decades now, Billy Walker is always looking to try new things and this Virgin Oak series demonstrates his passion for innovation in cask ageing. To that end, Glenallachie’s Virgin Oak Series can be seen as an ongoing experiment in the effects of different cask types on Glenallachie’s delicious whisky. It seems certain that there’ll be dozens of similar experiments going on at Glenallachie at any given moment, with only the most successful results reaching the market. The casks that cut the mustard for this Third Release in the series came from Spain, Hungary and Scotland herself. Glenallachie 8-year-old Scottish Virgin Oak and Glenallachie 7-year-old Hungarian Virgin Oak are both the same variety of oak: Quercus Patraea, a sessile oak that is very rarely used for coopering due to its exceptionally tight grain, which makes it tricky to work with. Glenallachie 10-year-old Spanish Virgin Oak, meanwhile, is made with virgin Spanish oak, Quercus Robur - a familiar variety used often for sherry butts but relatively unusual as a virgin oak cask.  The staves for these virgin casks were air-dried for between 18 and 36 months before being coopered, and all the casks were given a medium toast and char before being filled. The resulting whiskies are limited editions bottled without colouring or chill filtration at a palate-friendly 48%, and show the subtle and not-so-subtle variations that different types of wood can have on Glenallachie’s textbook new make spirit.  We can’t wait to try these fantastic four additions to our virtual shelves - if you’re a Glenallachie fan, head on over to our New Arrivals page where Glenallachie 10-year-old Cask Strength Batch 9 and all three of the Glenallachie Virgin Oak Series Third Release are live now. Don’t delay if you fancy any of these Glenallachies, because they’re all on strict allocation and when they’re gone, they’re gone!

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