What Is Aberfeldy 12? The Honeyed Highland Malt, Explained

Aberfeldy 12 is the single malt hiding inside a blend most people already know. If you have ever had a Dewar's, you have had Aberfeldy - it is the malt at the centre of that blend, and has been for over a century. What is less obvious is that it is also sold on its own, and on its own it is one of the gentlest, most likeable ways into single malt Scotch there is.

It is quietly the most-looked-at whisky on this site. So here is the whole story.

Where it comes from

Aberfeldy is a Highland distillery in Perthshire, built in 1898 by John Dewar & Sons and still sitting beside the same stream it was built for - the Pitilie Burn. The burn is the reason the distillery is where it is. Dewar's wanted a reliable water source and a spot on the railway line, and the Pitilie gave them the first.

The distillery has always had a job to do. Aberfeldy is the backbone of the Dewar's blends, which means for most of its life almost every drop went into a blend and never saw a bottle with its own name on it. The 12 year old as a single malt is the distillery stepping out from behind that.

Why they call it the Golden Dram

Aberfeldy's house character is honey. Not honey as a vague tasting-note flourish - the heather-honey note is the thing the distillery is actually known for, and it is what the nickname is about.

In the glass the 12 is amber-gold. The nose is honey and cooked orchard fruit, a bit of vanilla, a bit of malt loaf. The palate follows it: sweet up front, honeyed and rounded, then some spice and toasted oak on the way out. It is bottled at 40 percent and it drinks like it - soft, low-friction, nothing sharp.

There is no smoke in it. That matters if the last single malt you tried was an Islay and it tasted like a bonfire. Aberfeldy is the other end of that spectrum entirely. If you want to understand why some whisky tastes like smoke and this one does not, we wrote that up separately in What Is Peated Scotch?

The casks

The 12 spends its twelve years in a mix of American oak ex-bourbon casks and sherry casks. The bourbon wood is where the vanilla and the soft sweetness come from. The sherry wood adds the darker, fruitier edge underneath.

That is a fairly standard recipe for a Highland malt, and it is the reason Aberfeldy 12 tastes familiar even if you have never had it. It is not trying to surprise you.

How to drink it

Neat first, in a glass that narrows at the top, so you get the honey on the nose before anything else. Then add a few drops of water and try it again - at 40 percent it does not need much, but a little water opens the fruit up.

Ice is fine if that is how you enjoy it. It will mute the honey somewhat and firm up the spice. Nobody at this shop is going to tell you that you are holding it wrong.

It also works better than most malts after a meal, because the sweetness stands up to dessert instead of fighting it.

Where it sits against the other 12-year-olds

Aberfeldy 12 is $52.99. Against the other single malts on the shelf:

• The Singleton 12, $39.99 - also soft and fruity, a touch less honeyed, and the cheaper way to test whether you like this style at all.
• Glenmorangie Original 10, $39.99 - lighter and more floral, citrus rather than honey. The Glenmorangie range guide covers where the rest of that line goes.
• Glenfiddich 15 Solera, $84.99 - richer and more sherried, a step up in weight.
• Macallan 12 Double Cask, $99.99 - the sherry-forward benchmark, and roughly double the money.

If you are buying one bottle to find out whether you like Highland single malt, Aberfeldy 12 is the one we would hand you. It is the most forgiving of the group and the hardest to dislike. The rest of the shelf is in Scotch and the wider whiskey and spirits range.

A note on kosher status

Whisky is one of the areas where people ask us the most questions, and the honest answer is that it depends on the specific bottling and what wood it was finished in - not on the distillery as a whole. Rather than give you a blanket yes or no here, read Is Your Whiskey Kosher?, which lays out what to actually check, and call us if you want to talk through a particular bottle.

The short version

Aberfeldy 12 is a honeyed, unsmoky Highland single malt from the distillery that supplies Dewar's. It is soft, sweet, easy to drink, and about as gentle an introduction to single malt as exists. If the words "single malt" have ever felt like a wall, this is the door in it.

More on the categories: single malt vs blended Scotch, Scotch vs whiskey, and how much a bottle of whiskey should cost.