Benriach Single Cask 10 Year Old Whisky Review!

Benriach's single cask range doesn't make it to Australia very often, but every now & then we get lucky. They're much more affordably priced than sister distillery Glendronach's single cask bottlings, but how do they compare?

Obviously the distilleries are very different, and they're producing very different whiskies. While Glendronach has a massive cult following, Benriach is relatively quiet in comparison, despite re-opening its floor maltings in 2012, and despite regularly releasing a number of different limited cask finishes and new core expressions. Glendronach's single cask releases are constantly increasing in price and are becoming much more difficult to source, while Benriach's offerings are very reasonably priced and usually offer a very different experience to the core / regular bottlings from the distillery.

The most immediate major difference is that some of Benriach's single cask releases are peated (although I'm predicting that future Glendronach releases could follow suit), and rather than being predominantly either Oloroso or PX sherry casks with the occasional oddity, the Benriach releases vary massively in their cask types, with some Marsala, Madeira, red wine, dark rum and virgin oak casks, and some bottlings have even been triple distilled. So they may be a little more eccentric and a little more varied in general, probably because the distillery doesn't have as huge of an expectation as Glendronach to keep pumping out sherry bombs, so they can play around a little more. The bottlings also vary more widely in ages, probably because Benriach was only closed for two years (2001-2003), not six years (1996-2002) like its sister distillery and so doesn't have as large of a gap in its maturing stock.

Benriach is doing great work. I'm a big fan of their peated 10-year old Curiositas in particular, and I'm looking forward to tasting the future results of those revived floor maltings that were decommissioned back in 1998. That little fact makes them one of only two Speyside distilleries that are producing some of their own malted barley requirements (Balvenie being the other), and despite only being in use for one month of each year, I'm sure there'll be a floor-maltings-only bottling coming at some point in the future. Benriach's contemporary peated malts have (so far) been peated to 55 ppm prior to distillation, which is a substantial figure for a mainland whisky, and is only beaten by Benromach's Peat Smoke expression, but that may change when the floor-malted peated barley comes into play.

Australia recently received a small amount of Benriach single cask bottlings from Batch 14, available from one particular retailer who I suspect may have imported them directly from Europe, I can't be sure. Interestingly Batch 14 was the first to only include whisky that was distilled after the 2003 re-opening of the distillery, while previous batches have included older whiskies, some even 30-40 years old. This means that the oldest whiskies in this batch were just 12-years old, not that there's anything at all wrong with that. The bottling I'm looking at today, thanks to a generous fellow whisky nerd, is cask number 101, a 10-year old peated whisky that was fully matured in a single first-fill Oloroso sherry butt (500-litre cask). It was distilled in January 2007, and was bottled in June 2017 at the impressive cask strength of 61.9%, with a yield of 475 bottles. Naturally (pun intended) being a Benriach it's non-chill filtered and naturally (and beautifully) coloured. It retailed for $150 AUD, which is very reasonable for any cask strength whisky in Australia, but is a real bargain for a single cask whisky with an age statement. We can expect a real sherry bomb here, but the question we're going to need to answer is if any of that peat has survived, or if the cask has overshadowed it...

Benriach Single Cask #101, 10-years old, 61.9%. Speyside, Scotland.
Single cask batch 14. Peated, distilled Jan 2007, bottled June 2017. Matured in a first-fill Oloroso sherry butt, 475 bottles. Non-chill filtered, natural colour.

Colour: Very dark amber, with red tinges. Some serious colour for a 10-year old, this was one active cask!

Nose: Huge sherry bomb, and quite a busy & fantastic nose! Dark rich sherry, with sweet red fruits, oily tanned leather, cigar smoke, raisins soaked in sherry, and some scorched herbs. A touch of spicy wood smoke on the edges, and loads of creamy dark chocolate dessert (mousse?) and dark loose-leaf tea.

Texture: Medium weight, and a little heat (10-years and nearly 62% ABV will do that!), but it's packed full of big intense flavour.

Taste: Big spicy sherry with a big pepper spice hit, and some ethanol / alcohol nip too. Calms down with more breathing time, with lots of dark, oily old leather and some intense sweet red fruit. More strong, dark loose-leaf tea, and a light touch of red toffee apples. More spicy wood smoke, but it's still in the background.

Finish: Very long, and very sherried. Sweet and fruity initially, then a building bitterness with dark coffee syrup, dark chocolate mousse, some treacle, and spicy oak. Then some juicy raisins, which turn into currants, more leather, and more dark chocolate.

Score: 3.5 out of 5.

Notes: A great winter warmer here, and it's massively, massively sherried. That first-fill cask completely dominates the whole show without much of a fight, but if you like your dark, intense sherry bombs then this'll be right up your alley. In fact I'd say it's got a little more going on that some of the NAS sherry monster whiskies out there at the moment. Think a good Aberlour A'Bunadh, with the volume turned way up, and also the complexity and intensity turned up even further.

While there's not a lot of peat or smoke to be found in this Benriach (thanks to that dominant cask), I'm sure that it's added some extra depth and staying power to the overall package. And what a nose on this dram! It's very busy and quite intense, and again dominated by the sherry cask, but if you like that sort of thing you could easily spend a very long time with your nose stuck in your glass. And I should know, because that's exactly what I did. Really quite delicious, and a great buy at the original retail price, which is not something you can say very often about a peated, single cask sherry monster at high strength. Bravo Benriach, bravo.

Cheers!