BenRiach Cask Strength Batch 1
57.2% ABV - Speyside, Scotland
Nose: Red fruits, vanilla, and caramelized sugars - barley sugars? There is a light fruit sourness and minerality.
Taste: Upfront there are red fruits, orange citrus, and spices. This develops into honey, dried fruits, apples, and malted barley - small addition of water accelerated the release of these last notes.
Finish: It moves quickly into lasting fruits, citrus, ginger and spices. At this point I noticed a creamy character to it, like guava or coconut.
This is a great whisky. I feel that it exposes the raw, spirit-driven form of BenRiach. It has the fruit impact of an ex-Sherry bottling, but I haven’t read anything to suggest it is. And of all the cask strengths whiskies I have had, I’ve been satisfied drinking neat and taken addition of water as a preference to reduce heat or expose more flavour - but never felt like it really changed the profile drastically. I feel a little different with the BenRiach Cask Strength Batch 1; I highly(!) recommend adding water - definitely try it without first though - but water changed the experience significantly enough.
I found it difficult to rate this whisky despite having sat down with it a few times. I found that my scoring was inconsistent, and water or passage of time made a big difference. Before I posted this review, I had to make sure that I used a few sessions to play with the time and water aspects!
This expression of BenRiach was distilled under the watchful eye of Billy Walker, who you will now see as the legend behind the GlenAllachie revival. BenRiach is unique in that they are one of few distilleries to use their own malting floors - something that they only started up again in late 2012,... so that makes it hard to say whether any of that malted barley has ended up in the Glencairn which I thoughtfully sip the Cask Strength Batch 1.
Tasted 29 April 2019, 02 May 2019. (Posted 04 May 2019.)
