Balvenie, or "The" Balvenie as it's officially known, is a large & high-profile distillery in the town of Dufftown, Speyside that was originally founded in 1892. Their 6-million litre annual production capacity puts them in between their two William Grant & Sons neighbours & stablemates, the giant Glenfiddich and the smaller and much lesser known Kininvie. All are located on the same massive WG&S site found to the north-east of Dufftown. An interesting side-note there, Kininvie Distillery is actually only a still house, their mash tun and washbacks are housed inside Balvenie's buildings, which is a little unusual in Scotland, but it's still considered to be made "on site" and they are operated separately. There are a few other examples of malt distilleries being located within larger plants, another one being Ailsa Bay, another WG&S distillery which is found inside the huge Girvan grain distillery, so Kininvie's situation isn't actually that strange. Balvenie is certainly the malt enthusiasts' choice of the three William Grant's spirits, although there's not a huge amount of Kininvie out there to choose from since it's mainly used for blends and "teaspooned" blended malts that are sold to independent bottlers - where a dash of Kininvie is added to a batch of Glenfiddich or Balvenie to prevent the buyer using the distillery name and bottling it as a single malt. There have been a few single malt official bottlings of Kininvie, but they tend to be older whiskies that were distilled in the early-1990s, not long after the distillery was founded. If memory serves only one of these was sold in Australia, and it was a 23-year old that was bottled just under 43% - and interestingly, only in a 350ml half-bottle!
Despite being so close to each other, Balvenie, Glenfiddich and Kininvie do produce very different spirits. All three are blended together to result in Monkey Shoulder blended malt, and they're also blended with grain whisky to produce the Grant's blended whiskies. Balvenie is arguably the richer and weightier of the three whiskies, probably thanks to their shorter & fatter stills, and possibly also the floor-malted barley, which is actually lightly peated to around 5 ppm. But don't go looking for any smoke in the regular releases, since those malt floors only contribute around 15% of the distillery's malt. There have been a couple of peated Balvenies released more recently though, and since 2002 there's been one week of each distilling season / year where the distillery uses 100% peated barley in the malt floors. The floor-malted barley is also grown on the distillery's farm, named Balvenie Mains, a thousand-acre farm near the distillery, which is a very unusual thing for a distillery of this size and capacity. Also unusual for a distillery of this size is the fact that they still have their own on-site cooperage for the building & repair of their casks, and they also keep a coppersmith around for repairs & maintenance on their eleven pot stills and the other associated equipment. All of this means that there's only one step of the production process carried out off-site: the bottling stage, which takes place in a centralised William Grant's facility near Glasgow. The vast majority of Balvenie's expressions do carry age statements, with the youngest of the range being 12 years, all the way through to 50 years old - although that one will set you back a whopping $50,000 AUD!
There are two industry figureheads that are widely contributed with having pioneered the practice of cask finishing, a.k.a wood finishing, or double maturation, or extra maturation, or secondary maturation, or additional cask enhancement, whatever you want to call it. Those two are Glenmorangie's Bill Lumsden, and David Stewart, Balvenie's 'Malt Master' who started working at the distillery in 1962, and started playing around with cask finishing in the early 1980s. The first bottled result of that pioneering work was released back in 1993, when this Balvenie 12-year old Double Wood first hit the shelves. It's matured in refill ex-bourbon casks - the labelling actually says "traditional whisky oak", which I'd assume probably means refill American oak - for at least 12-years, then finished for up to 9 months in European oak ex-sherry casks. It's then moved into massive wooden marrying vats which are too large to be counted as part of maturation, called "tuns", for the vatting to marry together for an additional 3-4 months prior to bottling. As a quick digression, Balvenie pay homage to these large vats by releasing one of the few NAS bottlings in their line-up on a semi-regular basis : the TUN series, which while not cheap at over $500 AUD are still my picks of the Balvenie range - chiefly because they're bottled at a higher strength. Balvenie 12 is bottled at the minimum legal strength of 40% ABV, and is chill filtered and artificially coloured. It's currently the entry-level Balvenie expression, and typically sells for between $90 and $105 AUD, which isn't exactly cheap - particularly considering the low ABV - but is still reasonable in today's market. A 25th anniversary edition was also released in late 2018, but it was identical to the standard bottling in every way, save for a small maroon stripe being added to the outer packaging and the front label of the bottle. Let's get to it!
Matured in "traditional whisky oak"- probably refill ex-bourbon casks for at least 12-years, finished in European oak sherry casks for up to 9 months. Chill filtered, artificially coloured.
Colour: Amber.
Nose: Light & sweet. Red apples, lighter bitter oak & slightly burnt caramel, dried raspberries, and a little dry dusty malt. Sweet watery / diluted honey, vanilla bean, and soft wood spices - cinnamon & nutmeg.
Texture: Light weight, easy drinking. Not as sweet as the nose suggested, with more spices. Not a hot whisky, but it is a little raw & spirit-y.
Taste: Dry spices - warm cinnamon, nutmeg, more dried raspberries, dusty malt and lightly bitter oak - think pencil shavings. More diluted honey behind.
Finish: Medium length. Floral sweetness, black pepper, more red apples. Sweeter here again, with vanilla sugar, honey and more pencil shavings.
Score: 2.5 out of 5. But only just.
Notes: An easy, relatively un-challenging dram that still has a decent amount of flavour and character. Which is sometimes just what the doctor ordered. Yes it'd be better at 43-46% and without the chill filtration and colouring, but that's not really what this whisky is about. It's not quite aimed at that crowd (by which I mean: us!), and it is Balvenie's entry-level single malt after all, and for an early foray into single malts it's an ideal typical Speysider without too many surprises or curveballs. This one makes for a good palate calibrator, or a mood-setter, and it'd hold up to being thrown into a highball as well. I would say though that it's a little too expensive for where it sits - I'm guessing it's priced that way to help separate it from the same company's Monkey Shoulder blended and the long-standing Glenfiddich 12, which is around $20 AUD less expensive. But this Balvenie should be sitting a little lower if you ask me.
That said, the 12-year old Double Wood is still my pick of the Balvenie core range - yes, even the much-lauded Caribbean Cask 14-year old which has personally never floated my boat. And I much prefer this 12-year old to the overpriced and now discontinued 17-year old, despite that older version being bottled at a more acceptable 43% ABV. Which may be a bit of a surprise, since the 17 is generally well-regarded, but that's how my palate sees it, and it's certainly also how my wallet sees it!
Cheers!
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