Glann ar Mor NAS

French whisky encompasses a wide range of approaches and flavors from the hugely aromatic P&M from Corsica to the understated Alsace whiskies of Elsass Meyer’s and Uberbach. There is a trio of whiskies from Brittany. Guy le Lat’s Eddu uses buckwheat to create a whisky that out-ryes rye. Distilerie Warengheim makes the most widely-seen whisky Amorik. But for this writer the one to watch is Glann ar Mor (‘by the sea’) established in 2005 by Jean Donnay. A traditionalist approach: direct fire wooden washbacks wild yeast and worm tubs yield a single malt whisky that though barely over the 3 year legal limit is already complex: think barley sugar and apricot. The fire and the worms give the mid-palate some real weight (boding well for longer-term maturation) but the slow distillation has added floral notes that dance on top. £55