Glenfiddich 1964 Finest and Rarest 45-year-old / 55.8% / 0.7l

Wm Grant & Sons, owner of Glenfiddich and Balvenie among others, generally does not allow private publishers to release its single malts.

If it sells whisky to brokers, it is “spiced” with a small amount of its sister single malt, which puts it in the “spooned malts” category. This is not to say that “independent editions” do not exist, although having been active in the whisky market for most of the new century, we have only encountered a few – Cadenhead, Hart Brothers and the Kingsbury presented here.

Kingsbury Wine & Spirits is a Japanese whisky publisher held in great esteem by collectors and connoisseurs of the drink. The company was founded in 1989 in Aberdeen and in 1992 was incorporated by Katsuhiko Tanaka, president of Japan Import Systems Company Ltd., founded in 1956. Tanaka developed a business relationship with J&A Mitchell Co. and his first releases were based on whisky from the stocks of Cadenhead's Ltd. and to a lesser extent Douglas Laing & Co. The Glenfiddich presented here is the jewel in the crown of any collection. Distilled in 1964, the whisky spent four and a half decades in a sherry hogshead cask and was bottled at 55.8% ABV around 2010. We didn’t have the opportunity to taste this whisky, we can only guess that it is a real “sherry bomb”, exploding with shards of dried fruit, bitter oranges, honey, dark chocolate, spices and oak tannins.”