The Balvenie 88 Is Now the Oldest Single Malt Whisky in the World
The race for the oldest whisky in the world continues, and a new release just took the title from last year’s winner. The Balvenie just announced the release of an 88-year-old single malt scotch, the oldest whisky to date from the distillery, and the oldest whisky that you can currently find in a bottle.
The previous title for oldest whisky in the world belonged to last year’s 85-year-old Glenlivet, which was released by independent bottler Gordon & MacPhail. But this whisky beats that lengthy age statement by three years. The Balvenie is the sister distillery to its next-door neighbor Glenfiddich (both are owned by Scottish company William Grant & Sons). While it has released some ultra-aged whiskies before, this one beats the previous highest age statement by a few decades.
The Balvenie Eighty-Eight-Year-Old was distilled on March 5, 1931, and spent its entire maturation lifespan in a European oak sherry butt from Jerez, Spain (cask #239). In 2019, malt master Kelsey McKechnie felt that it had reached its peak in terms of age and flavor, and decided to bottle it (the cask yielded just 17 bottles). “One morning in 2019 I sampled a whisky that had reached perfection,” she said in a statement. “Exceptional in both substance and significance, I quietly instructed for it to be bottled and locked away for safekeeping. Distilled by the Balvenie’s craftspeople in 1931 and filled into a refill sherry butt sourced from Jerez, it then lay silently in our warehouse for a staggering 88 years. It is both inspiring and humbling to be the malt master to bring this precious liquid to the world.”
It’s worth mentioning once again that age does not necessarily equal quality in whisky of any category. Sometimes the liquid is good after many decades in casks, and sometimes it’s not. We were not able to sample this extremely rare whisky, so for the time being we’ll have to rely on McKechnie’s tasting notes, biased though they might be. Overall, she described it as a “sensorial experience evoking the serene silence of evergreen woods.” That’s quite a concept to wrap your head around, but the specific tasting notes she provided are aromas of honey, mint, and fudge on the nose; followed by notes of aromatic oak, creamy toffee, velvety honey, warming spice, heather, and woodland fern on the palate.
The 88-year-old is actually part of a trio of whiskies that are being released as the 1931 Collection. The other two are much younger—12 and 15-year-old single malts, both made from barley that was malted at the distillery’s own floor malting, and aged in ex-bourbon barrels before being finished in sherry casks.
As you might expect, the 88-year comes with some very special packaging. The crystal decanter is inside of a sculpture designed by artist Daniel Arsham, which is meant to represent the eight decades the whisky spent in oak, and includes a copper disc from a decommissioned still at its center. The brand has not revealed the price of this rare whisky, only that it’s “available to private clients and collectors” (but it’s surely going to be quite high). The 12-year is available for $100 and the 15 for $200, however, starting this month in select markets around the country.
