Whisky of the Week: Glenglassaugh is the unkillable scotch and its revival is well earned

Welcome back to FTW’s Beverage of the Week series. Here, we mostly chronicle and review beers, but happily expand that scope to any beverage that pairs well with sports. Yes, even cookie dough whiskey.

Glenglassaugh has a classic scotch story — one that nearly ended multiple times. It was one of Scotland’s many coastal distilleries, a whisky mill in a classic stone building turning water into something better. The northeastern fishing town, a breezy mix of salt and sand, saw its brewer shutter its doors twice since its 1875 founding. Once in 1908 and once as it faced the hardships of the whisky crash of the 1980s.

But the stills roared back to life in 2008. Now, a little more than 15 years later, Glenglassaugh has pushed its way back onto the marketplace with a proper dram. 2023 marked an aggressive marking strategy revolving around a new 12-year whisky to complement the distillery’s other standbys. Its place as a coastal Highland suggests it could hit the sweet spot between the inland’s smoother, full-bodied malts and Islay’s salty, smoky, brassy offerings.

I love both those styles. Let’s see how Glenglassaugh holds up.