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Release Notes
A delicious no-age-statement dram from Glenmorangie, some of the spirit in Signet has been made using a unique heavily-roasted Chocolate Malt that really beefs up the rich flavours. The packaging is very impressive too.
The Whisky Exchange
A fusion of unique and rare elements, and clouded in secrecy, Signet is the culmination of a lifetime's experience. A blend of our oldest whisky - distilled over thirty years ago when malting still occurred on site - and spirit matured in a selection of the world's finest casks, this undoubtedly is the richest whisky in our range.
Of course, whilst the exact secrets of its production are known only to our whisky creators, we can tell you that Signet's melting sweetness and explosive spiciness is, at least in part, caused by our unique roasted 'chocolate' barley malt and the 'designer casks' made bespoke for Glenmorangie from American white oak.
Glenmorangie
3rd Party Tasting Notes
Aroma: A strong Aruba espresso fused with a treacly plum pudding, rich with sherry, and candied orange peel.
Taste: A contrast of rich sweetness with an explosive crackle of sizzling spices and bitter mocha.
Finish: A fresh spring-like breeze of mint with a bright citrus lemony-green quality.
Colour: Deep amber
Taste: A contrast of rich sweetness with an explosive crackle of sizzling spices and bitter mocha.
Finish: A fresh spring-like breeze of mint with a bright citrus lemony-green quality.
Colour: Deep amber
Glenmorangie
We're trying this H2H with an older Glenmorangie 12yo 'Côtes de Beaune' finish, that was quite a success in our book in the 'plain wine' finished category (among quite some misses in our opinion.)
Colour: amber/orange.
Nose: well, it does smell a bit like sherry-finished whisky but not only that, as if there was something else in the mix. Maybe new oak? Rather fragrant, with rather obvious notes of old roses and old-style perfume (musk, patchouli), then vanilla, bitter oranges and ginger. A little paraffin as well. Gets finally much toastier, sort of roasted (coffee beans) before returning to fruitier notes (blackcurrants). Always quite some ginger and nutmeg, rather typical of new or first fill oak. Very nice nose altogether, only the rather heavy notes of paraffin are a bit too much for our taste.
Mouth: it's a little more on the winey/honeyed side again at the attack (very ripe strawberries) but that's soon to be counterbalanced with the same notes of toasted oak as on the nose. Very sweet and rather nervous. There are clearly these two 'families' of aromas, both being easily identifiable, but just as what happened on the nose, it's the oak that wins at the end, thanks to its very spicy signature (the usual soft curry, dried ginger, white pepper and nutmeg.)
Finish: long, the oak almost speaks solo now, with quite some tannins and even a little mustard.
Comments: I'm wondering whether the two main kinds of casks that were used here - or so it seems - were used consecutively or if they were simply blended before bottling. Either way, it's another very good 'modern' whisky by Glenmorangie, kind of the missing link between their experiments with wine casks (Côtes de Beaune, for instance) and new oak (Artisan Cask, Astar and all the single casks). It works, and I guess the various combinations of both 'universes' can make for endless variations.
Rating: 87 points.
Colour: amber/orange.
Nose: well, it does smell a bit like sherry-finished whisky but not only that, as if there was something else in the mix. Maybe new oak? Rather fragrant, with rather obvious notes of old roses and old-style perfume (musk, patchouli), then vanilla, bitter oranges and ginger. A little paraffin as well. Gets finally much toastier, sort of roasted (coffee beans) before returning to fruitier notes (blackcurrants). Always quite some ginger and nutmeg, rather typical of new or first fill oak. Very nice nose altogether, only the rather heavy notes of paraffin are a bit too much for our taste.
Mouth: it's a little more on the winey/honeyed side again at the attack (very ripe strawberries) but that's soon to be counterbalanced with the same notes of toasted oak as on the nose. Very sweet and rather nervous. There are clearly these two 'families' of aromas, both being easily identifiable, but just as what happened on the nose, it's the oak that wins at the end, thanks to its very spicy signature (the usual soft curry, dried ginger, white pepper and nutmeg.)
Finish: long, the oak almost speaks solo now, with quite some tannins and even a little mustard.
Comments: I'm wondering whether the two main kinds of casks that were used here - or so it seems - were used consecutively or if they were simply blended before bottling. Either way, it's another very good 'modern' whisky by Glenmorangie, kind of the missing link between their experiments with wine casks (Côtes de Beaune, for instance) and new oak (Artisan Cask, Astar and all the single casks). It works, and I guess the various combinations of both 'universes' can make for endless variations.
Rating: 87 points.
Whisky Fun
With my recent (good) impression of the current Glenmorangie range, and the way they are prepared to take a few risks and try a lot of experimentation to come up with unique new bottlings, naturally the flagship dram, the Signet, has been on my radar for a while. Nearly a year ago when I last visited my usual purchasing place in person (I buy online), the gents behind the counter said it was one of the few drams in the price range that is actually worth the money. Still, at around $275 a bottle, it was always something that I wanted, but I could never bring myself to fork out the money for. So when I noticed a $100 off sale on the Signet in their newsletter I decided (with permission from the boss, my wife) to take the plunge! Apparently this is the result of several years of experimentation. According to various sources around the traps, a portion of the whisky is made from 'chocolate malt,' which is industry speak for malt that is kilned at a higher temperature. This is supposed to increase complexity, and emphasise caramel and vanilla notes. Most often it is used in mild dark ales and stouts that have a sweet edge. It also has some Cardboll barley malt in it, which is said to result in a creaminess. Matured in ex-Oloroso sherry casks and new lightly toasted Ozark American oak casks with no age statement. And while some of it is no doubt quite young, there are rumours that it contains some barrels that are up to 35 years old! Blurb aside, on to the tasting!
Nose: The nose is thick, rich and luscious. Full of rich, dark chocolate, ground coffee beans, christmas cake, robust sherry, chunky marmalade. Hints of scotch finger biscuits, oak and cream. Cinnamon? Pears? A floral note? Oh wow! Really complex!
Taste: The taste is both creamy and syrupy. Really thick and mouth-filling. This whisky has texture! I don't normally take a lot of notice about how the whisky feels (as in the sensation of how it feels against the inside of my mouth), but this feels really luscious. Tastes of orange, chocolate, lightly roasted coffee, cinnamon, caramel and oak. It has a nuttiness to it as well. Hard to pin down, and takes several sips to get all the flavours, and it's not just the complexity, but the feel of the whisky keeps distracting me (in a good way)!
Finish: The finish is long, and spicier than the nose or the taste. The sweet chocolate, marmalade and nuttiness are there, but the sweet cinnamon has put its foot down and made its presence felt, giving this a tingly warmness that keeps the finish going for ages.
Comments: This is a bit out there, and very different. It must have taken a lot of attempts to get this to the point it's at. This feels like a whisky that has been tweaked, prodded and primped to within an inch of it's life, like a real show pony. But what a show pony it is! So, yet another whisky coming out of Glenmorangie at the moment has impressed me! It's amazing what can happen when a large distillery is prepared to put some time effort and resources into experimentation with nearly every part of the process they use to make whisky!
Rating: 97/100
Nose: The nose is thick, rich and luscious. Full of rich, dark chocolate, ground coffee beans, christmas cake, robust sherry, chunky marmalade. Hints of scotch finger biscuits, oak and cream. Cinnamon? Pears? A floral note? Oh wow! Really complex!
Taste: The taste is both creamy and syrupy. Really thick and mouth-filling. This whisky has texture! I don't normally take a lot of notice about how the whisky feels (as in the sensation of how it feels against the inside of my mouth), but this feels really luscious. Tastes of orange, chocolate, lightly roasted coffee, cinnamon, caramel and oak. It has a nuttiness to it as well. Hard to pin down, and takes several sips to get all the flavours, and it's not just the complexity, but the feel of the whisky keeps distracting me (in a good way)!
Finish: The finish is long, and spicier than the nose or the taste. The sweet chocolate, marmalade and nuttiness are there, but the sweet cinnamon has put its foot down and made its presence felt, giving this a tingly warmness that keeps the finish going for ages.
Comments: This is a bit out there, and very different. It must have taken a lot of attempts to get this to the point it's at. This feels like a whisky that has been tweaked, prodded and primped to within an inch of it's life, like a real show pony. But what a show pony it is! So, yet another whisky coming out of Glenmorangie at the moment has impressed me! It's amazing what can happen when a large distillery is prepared to put some time effort and resources into experimentation with nearly every part of the process they use to make whisky!
Rating: 97/100
Connosr
Nose: Extraordinary, contradictory nose: Jamaican ginger, coffee grounds. Then there's fruits: apple crumble with custard. Sweet but bitter, soft but roasted.
Palate: Soft, sweet and thick with chocolate, coca-cola. Lots of oak derived notes but enough softness of spirit to balance. Great Breadth
Finish: Triffle, orange peel and blackberry.
Comment: A bold and some would say a-typical. It works is a valid and successful improvisation on the theme.
Rating: 87
Palate: Soft, sweet and thick with chocolate, coca-cola. Lots of oak derived notes but enough softness of spirit to balance. Great Breadth
Finish: Triffle, orange peel and blackberry.
Comment: A bold and some would say a-typical. It works is a valid and successful improvisation on the theme.
Rating: 87
Dave Broom, Whisky Magazine #75
Nose: Very intriguing. Bags of treacle toffee, parkin cake, fresh coffee and old leather. Maple syrup without the pancakes. A definite roasted edge.
Palate: Oddly reminds me of Stout, dark, roasted slightly bitter sweet.
Finish: A mild bitterness swathed in soft, dark fruits.
Comment: A great whisky and interesting to see what this new Glenmorangie future can hold.
Rating: 89
Palate: Oddly reminds me of Stout, dark, roasted slightly bitter sweet.
Finish: A mild bitterness swathed in soft, dark fruits.
Comment: A great whisky and interesting to see what this new Glenmorangie future can hold.
Rating: 89
Rob Allanson, Whisky Magazine #75
The Distillery: Glenmorangie
| Established: 1843 |
| Silent since: False |
| Address: Glen Morangie, Tain, Ross-Shire IV19 1PZ, United Kingdom |
| → website |
The Glenmorangie distillery in the Northern Highlands of Scotland can be credited with the popularisation of the idea of "finished malt whisky" - although I"m not sure if they were also the first to apply the technique of double maturation in another cask. Around 1995 Glenmorangie released three different " wood finishes" - a Port Finish, a Madeira Finish and a Sherry Finish. Later on some more finished "limited releases" were bottled.
2009 - Glenmorangie distillery is closed altogether in October 2008 so that two pairs of brand new stills can be added to the eight that were already in use. When the doors of the distillery are opened again in March 2009, the production capacity has increased from 4,000,000 litres of alcohol per year to 6,000,000 litres of alcohol per year. Mind you; this is the MAXIMUM capacity - due to the reconstruction and credit crisis actual production is lower.
2008 - Owners LVMH sell Glenmorangie"s "sister distillery" Glen Moray to La Martiniquaise. LVMH has little interest in whisky production itself and wants to focus on building the brands "Ardbeg" and "Glenmorangie".
Production-wise, a lot has changed at Glenmorangie over the years. For one thing, the number of stills was expanded from two to four in 1980, which was also the time they stopped malting their own barley. Glenmorangie managed to survive the whisky crisis of the early 1980"s with flying colours; in 1990 the number of stills was expanded again to a grand total of eight stills.
Those eight stills enable Glenmorangie to produce a whopping four million litres of pure alcohol each year. For a long time a lot of the malt whisky they produced was consumed within Scotland, but now it"s a world wide brand .
But of course, Glenmorangie is more than the premier purveyor of "finished" whiskies in Scotland. Their history started not unlike many of its Scottish competitors - in the nineteenth century. Not far from the site of the Balblair distillery (founded half a century earlier in 1790) William and John Mathesen built the "Morangie" farm distillery in 1843. William had been one of the co-owners of Balblair but apparently he wanted to strike out on his own. The Mathesen brothers selected a site with a long history of illicit distillation; there are claims about whisky distillation in the area as far back as 1738 and even 1703. However, actual production of malt whisky at Glenmorangie didn"t start until November 1849.
In 1887 the Glenmorangie Distillery Company Ltd. was founded and the distillery was rebuilt. In 1918 the distillery was sold to 2 partners; MacDonald & Muir Ltd. and Durham - circa two decades later MacDonald & Muir became full owners. Somewhere along the way, the name of the parent company was changed to Glenmorangie plc by the MacDonald family. They decided to sell the company (that also owned the Ardbeg and Glen Moray distilleries) to LVMH in 2004.
For a few years Glenmorangie was virtually the only malt whisky distillery to use "deviant" casks for the maturation of their stocks, but around the year 2000 more and more whisky distilleries in Scotland started to experiment with unusual casks that had no place in the whisky tradition.
Particularly Bruichladdich and Edradour turned into radical finishing freaks, taking the concept of double maturation further than Glenmorangie ever did. Personally, I prefer some of these "finishes" to the regular product...
During the 1990"s Glenmorangie was one of the few malt whisky distilleries with a well oiled marketing machine behind them, like Glenfiddich, Glenlivet, Springbank and the Classic Malts.
For my own tastes the PR language sometimes was a tad too oily, but you can"t argue with the numbers; Glenmorangie is now a top selling malt.
2004 - Glenmorangie buys the Scotch Malt Whisky Society. Furthermore, on August 24, 2004 the MacDonald family put their majority share of Glenmorangie Group plc on the market. Within the whisky industry, many expected that Brown Forman (owner of brands like Jack Daniels, Woodford Reserve and Southern Comfort) would expand its minority share, but perfume peddlers Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessey took over the company and its three distilleries instead.
2007 - The entire range of official Glenmorangie bottlings is revised. The old 10yo is replaced by the 10yo "Original" and parts of the range are discontinued. This includes the 15yo, the 30yo (which had just been introduced in 2005) and many of the more exotic finishes. The varieties "Astar" and "Signet" are introduced not long afterwards.
After the success the "mother brand" had with finishes, "daughter distillery" Glen Moray started to release their own finishes as well around the year 2000. For me personally, these didn"t work as well as the Glenmorangie finishes. While the fairly clean and subtle regular 10-12yo whisky from Glenmorangie benefited from the extra maturation, the fuller Speyside malts from Glen Moray lost some of their "edge" after weird finishes like Chardonnay or Chenin Blanc.
For my own tastes the PR language sometimes was a tad too oily, but you can"t argue with the numbers; Glenmorangie is now a top selling malt.
But is it any good? Well, the "house style" of most of the regular line-up is a tad light for my own tastes, but for "brand" blend drinkers it is a perfect "gateway malt" - a strong brand they can stick to with a couple of interesting expressions that could lead them to new malty discoveries later on.
As for the finishes: they seem to have a hard time achieving batch consistency, so buying a bottle is Russian roulette... Glenmorangie whisky Glenmorangie distillery in the new millennium
But is it any good? Well, the "house style" of most of the regular line-up is a tad light for my own tastes, but for "brand" blend drinkers it is a perfect "gateway malt" - a strong brand they can stick to with a couple of interesting expressions that could lead them to new malty discoveries later on.
As for the finishes: they seem to have a hard time achieving batch consistency, so buying a bottle is Russian roulette...
After the success the "mother brand" had with finishes, "daughter distillery" Glen Moray started to release their own finishes as well around the year 2000. For me personally, these didn"t work as well as the Glenmorangie finishes. While the fairly clean and subtle regular 10-12yo whisky from Glenmorangie benefited from the extra maturation, the fuller Speyside malts from Glen Moray lost some of their "edge" after weird finishes like Chardonnay or Chenin Blanc.
In the new Millenium
Trivia:
- At a height of more than 16 feet (5 m.), Glenmorangie has the tallest pot stills in the Scotch whisky industry. The original pair was expanded to four in 1980, and doubled again to eight in 1990. A further expansion to a grand total of twelve stills occurred in 2008 and 2009. All stills ore close replica"s from the stills that were built in 1887.
- The Glenmorangie distillery used to be a brewery before the distillery was founded.
- An unusually high percentage of the whisky that is distilled at Glenmorangie is sold as a single malt. Circa 70% of the whisky is bottled as SMSW; the rest was used in blends like Bailie Nicol Jarvie & Highland Queen. The very small percentage of malt whisky that is sold to brokers and bottlers used to be diluted with a few drops of Glen Moray (so it can"t be sold on as a single malt) and labeled as "West Port whisky".
- Glenmorangie has proven that it"s possible to increase sales considerably while decreasing "quality". Since the early 1990"s the profile of the regular expressions had been growing blander and blander, but the changes happened at an even more rapid pace after perfume peddlers Louis Vuitton MH obtained the distillery.
- The name of the whisky is pronounced glen-MOR-an-jee, with the stress on the "mor" and rhyming with orangey, not GLEN-mor-AN-jee as it is commonly mispronounced.
from Malt Madness
The Owner: LVMH Moet Hennessy * Louis Vuitton
| Established: 1987 |
| Silent since: False |
| Address: 22, Avenue Montaigne, 75008 Paris, France |
| → website |
Christian Dior, the luxury goods group, is the main holding company of LVMH, owning 42.4% of its shares, and 58.2% of its voting rights. Bernard Arnault, majority shareholder of Dior, is Chairman of both companies and CEO of LVMH. His successful integration of various famous aspirational brands into the group has inspired other luxury companies into doing the same. Thus Gucci (now part of the French conglomerate PPR) and Richemont have also created extended portfolios of luxury brands. The oldest of the LVMH brands is wine producer Chateau d"Yquem, which dates its origins back to 1593.
LVMH is based in Paris, France. The company is listed on the Euronext Paris exchange, and is a constituent of the CAC 40 index. As of 2008, the group revenues of EUR17.2 billion with a net income of EUR2.318 billion. The group currently employs 77,000 people. 30% of LVMH"s staff work in France. LVMH operates over 2,300 stores worldwide. Its current business plan aims to tightly control the brands it manages in order to maintain and heighten the perception of luxury relating to their products. For example, Louis Vuitton products are sold only through Louis Vuitton boutiques found in upmarket locations in wealthy cities or in concessions in other luxury goods shops (such as Harrods in London). This practice contrasts greatly with less exclusive brands which can be bought in shopping malls around the world.
LVMH Moet Hennessy * Louis Vuitton S.A. (Euronext: MC), usually shortened to LVMH, is a French holding company and one of the world"s largest luxury goods conglomerate. It is the parent of around 60 sub-companies that each manage a small number of prestigious brands. These daughter companies are, to a large extent, run autonomously. The group was formed after mergers brought together champagne producer Moet et Chandon and Hennessy, a leading manufacturer of cognac. In 1987, they merged with fashion house Louis Vuitton to form the current group.
from Wikipedia