Review #128: Edradour: The Fairy Flag 15 Year Review
Sylvia received a handful of samples when she visited Big Market, an incredible whisky shop in Berlin that’s not too far from the Berlin airport and allows tastings for nominal fees of the majority of whiskies that the store sells. The mini-bottle was one of the samples given on-the-house from the store, since she walked out with an American-sized haul. The bottling stylistically is a bit strange and features a verse on the bottle:
Some conflicts are fought in the heart
Whisky bottle
as well as the battlefield
This is a limited edition bottling of Edradour which was released in honor of the Scottish feature film Fairy Flag. The film is an epic romance between the Clan Chief of the Macleod’s and the mysterious Fairy maiden, Titania, who needed to return to fairyland and bequeathed the fairy flag upon the clan. I spent a while trying to look up IMDB and Rotten Tomato reviews on it, but the closest I could find was a listing for a 3-part documentary detailing the making of the movie. I’ll presume it’s fairly good – to have a whisky made in honor of it. The fairy flag itself is an heirloom of Clan MacLeod, which is said to have magical properties – made from Chinese silk and covered in small red “elf dots”. Among its magical powers are to multiply military forces, increase fertility, cure plague on cattle, and was thought to give luck to servicemen on bombing missions in World War II.
Now onto the whisky itself – it’s very sweet – romantic, even and I enjoyed it a lot. Full tasting notes below the picture of the mini-bottle (and the cat).
Also featuring our 8 year old cat in the background.
- Score - 7.5/107.5/10
Overall
Tasting Notes
Nose: Sherry, VERY SHERRY, plums, apples, fresh fruit.
Palate: Caramel, cherries, some vanilla, bread pudding. Butterscotch.
Finish: Sweet milk chocolate.
Score: 7.5/10. Very good. It’s definitely a sherry monster and sweet – a lot of really nice decadent dessert notes on it. It’s a shame it’s an exclusive release because I don’t think I’ll get to try it again.
Quick overview of our scoring system
Additional Information
- ABV: 46%
- Aged in ex-bourbon casks for 8 years, then aged in first fill, ex-oloroso sherry casks for a further 8 years.
- Unchillfiltered, natural color.
About Edradour
A few years back we visited the magical Edradour distillery. We were told it was a must visit from a few fellow drinkers at San Francisco’s Whisky Shop, and we were able to check it out, driving down from Speyside back to Glasgow. Edradour is located next to Pitlochary, a quintessential English / Scottish village. It looks like the village from Hot Fuzz (before it gets blown up anyway).
- Edrarour is Scotland’s “smallest distillery.” Not entirely sure if that is true, but they make 18 casks per week, 95,000 liters capacity (6% of Bruichladdich, 0.7% of Glenfiddich)
- Established in 1825, originally run by three men, now just two.
- Closed and opened, including in 1938 by Irvin Haim, (from the Costello family). Bought by Signatory in 2002.