Benriach's single cask range is getting a little more time in the spotlight in Australia than it has in the past, largely thanks to Brown Forman's purchase of the distillery, along with Glendronach and Glenglassaugh, from Billy Walker & friends back in 2016, and subsequently taking over distribution down under. They're generally more reasonably priced than the equivalent bottles from Glendronach, and they offer a wider variety with some heavily peated whiskies, a good mix of older and younger ages, and a much wider variety of cask types in each batch of releases. It's not uncommon to find a 25-year old peated sherry cask, or a Sauternes, Marsala or Rum cask release, or even a triple-distilled release. Benriach has always been more experimental and somewhat of a chameleon than its sister distilleries, something that I would say stems from three main factors. Their spirit is, or rather was, in higher demand for blended whiskies rather than single malts, and in comparison to Glendronach there is less commercial pressure to keep pumping out consistently delicious sherry bombs to satisfy the demand of their cult following. There's also less pressure on the existing stocks since Benriach's most recent shut down only lasted for two years, compared to Glendronach's six and Glenglassaugh's twenty-two years.
Located around a 10-minute drive south of Elgin in Speyside, Benriach had a very difficult past. Production originally began in 1898, but the distillery operated for just two years before being shut down amid the period of mass overproduction and subsequent closures known as the Pattison Crisis. The distillery was comatose for a massive sixty-five years, only being kept alive by the use of its malting floors by neighbouring distillery Longmorn. Benriach was purchased, rebuilt and revived by Glenlivet Distillers in 1965, and subsequently by Seagrams in 1978. The floor maltings were decommissioned in 1998, and soon after Seagrams became part of Pernod Ricard in 2001 Benriach was slated to only distill for three months of the year, before being shut down again in 2002.. But things began to look up in 2004 when industry stalwart Billy Walker and a couple of South African business partners purchased the distillery and nursed it back to health, which included re-opening those malting floors in 2012, albeit for only one month per year. Interestingly the plan is to keep the floor-malted barley separate from the commercially sourced malt, rather than mixing it in like most distilleries, which means that we can probably expect some Benriach local barley single malts to be released in a few years' time. After the Brown-Forman purchase in 2016 and the instalment of Rachel Barrie as master blender, things certainly don't seem to be slowing down!
The subject of this review is an un-peated 25-year old single cask, part of Batch 15 which was released in Europe in mid-2018. A selection of those releases arrived in Australia a few months later, although this particular cask, which was fully matured in an ex-port hogshead, doesn't seem to have been among them. For a whisky to spend 25 years in a port cask is unusual enough already, but even more so in this case because that cask was a 250-litre hogshead, not the much larger 500-550 litre port pipe, which all other things being equal means more cask influence. Cask number 979 was distilled in February 1992 and bottled in 2018, and like all of Benriach's single cask releases it is non-chill filtered, naturally coloured, and was bottled at natural cask strength, which in this case was 53.9% ABV with a yield of 275 bottles. It seems to be largely sold out, with only a couple of Canadian websites still having stock, and selling for the equivalent of $640 AUD. Which is quite the financial outlay, but is reasonable for a single cask bottling of this age. I've found un-peated port-matured whiskies to be a little hit & miss in the past, but those have all been significantly younger than this example, so I'm very interested to see how it goes. The sample for this review came from a swap with a generous fellow whisky geek. Let's get to it!
Benriach 25-year old un-peated single Port cask, 53.9%. Speyside, Scotland.
Distilled Feb 1992, fully matured in a single ex-Port hogshead, bottled 2018. Cask strength, non-chill filtered, natural colour. 275 bottles, released in Batch 15.
Colour: Dark amber.
Nose: Sweet, chocolate-y and lightly spicy. Surprisingly fresh & bright too for a 25-year old whisky, a really lovely nose. There's something very Benriach to it as well, with a fruity freshness and a great balance, it's not as heavily oaked or as heavily cask influenced as I expected. There's loads of stewed & fresh stone fruit, particularly plum & nectarine and a little apricot, with toffee sauce. Some stem ginger and a little spearmint around the edges. More time brings out some fresh toffee apple.
Texture: Heavy weight, thick & rich, but still with a surprisingly fresh feel. A slight heat, but very pleasant.
Taste: Rich & spicy, there's much more stem ginger here, and it's not as sweet as I expected after the nose. It still has that stone fruit note, but it's all stewed now, and there's less apple and more toffee, with the toffee now lightly burnt.
Finish: Long length. The ginger note carries through, and there's an added touch of white pepper. It's still not as sweet as expected but there's more of the toffee apples and fresh stone fruit coming back here. That light oak and minty freshness returns as well with a lovely milk chocolate-coated licorice following through.
Score: 4 out of 5.
Notes: Truly very tasty stuff this. This would certainly be the best of the Benriach single casks that I've tasted to date. In fact it's quite possibly the best Benriach that I've tasted to date. The nose is definitely the highlight, but there isn't much wrong with the rest of the experience either! It's very well-balanced between fresh & bright Speyside spirit and spicy oak, with plenty of character to boot. I did expect more cask influence, and particularly more port influence, from those 25 long years of full maturation, but that's not a complaint by any means. It's a different experience, and it's certainly been well looked after over that quarter of a century. I can see why it was selected for bottling as a single cask.
Being distilled in '92 this would've contained a portion of the distillery's own floor-malted barley, but it was also distilled under Seagrams ownership, and before Benriach existed as a single malt, at least as far as official bottlings go. So I'd say there was also an element of luck to this one, where everything came together just right. There aren't many 25-year old single cask bottlings around, let alone bottlings of this standard. Really great stuff. Well done Benriach & Ms. Barrie!
Cheers!
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