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Benromach 10yo
Speyside Single Malt Whisky
43% abv
£29
$50
When I was in Scotland in July I was in touch with Ian Chapman at Benromach and after a short volley of emails he very kindly invited me to see their distillery. Upon arrival, I was greeted by Ian, David Urquhart and distillery manager Keith Cruickshank.
It is a very unassuming place, and my hosts suited it perfectly. With just two distillers and only 200,000 litres produced per year, Benromach is the smallest Speyside distillery. After a walk around the distillery and warehouses at a relaxed-pace the lads sat me down for a dram, a coffee, and to willingly subject themselves to my interrogations.
They then presented me with the TOP SECRET box that a few whisky writers and bloggers have mentioned and explained elsewhere online. They were launching their first Benromach 10 year old, that is, the first ten year old whisky made entirely of whisky produced under their ownership and were investing in marketing the spirit in a clever and fun way. The whisky was matured for 9 years in a mixture of ex-bourbon (80%) and ex-sherry (20%) and then spent an additional year in sherry butts.
Gordon & Macphail (the Urquhart family) bought Benromach in 1998, a distillery that had been mothballed in 1993. It was reported recently that G&M's profits were halved last year over the previous. Nonethless, the company has increased investment at Benromach and now it is our responisbility to go out and support them. So do it.
To find out which bottle you want to go buy, see all past Benromach posts HERE.
TASTING NOTES:
Rich, weighty, and warming with peat. Wet, water-logged soil sweetened with toffee, vanilla, and honey.
Luscious body, wood, malt, grapes, tobacco, apricots, dried apples, smoke, butterscotch... A mouthful of flavours. Stewed carrots, oatmeal, figs, a tannic grip, pine, carob, asparagus... a very complex array of flavours beautifully balanced.
SUMMARY:
A complex mixture of the whisky flavour wheel: sweet, earthy ,oily, woody, with the estery notes you'd expect from Speyside and the phenolic ones you might not. The Urquharts will proudly remind you that you can find nothing like the Benromach distillery in Speyside and, if true, this dram provides the most appropriate representation of that fact. A truly peerless dram.
I have to say that as a 10 year old Speysider, I don't think this has any parallels and would destroy its category at international spirits awards events (if the judges can fight the urge to continually define Speysiders as sweet, light, and floral whiskies). They can be so much more, they have been so much more, and they ARE so much more.
One of the best new releases, hell, one of the best whiskies, I have had the pleasure of drinking this year. Other opinions HERE and HERE.
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Benromach Organic
Speyside Single Malt Scotch Whisky
43% abv
£30
Organic this and that, off-setting carbon footprints, recycling in Hackney borough... the world is changing and we are starting to realise that we are causing some of that change. But is this awareness just a fad? a trend? will it, as a concept, be commodified like everything else in this consumer culture? I remember back in 1989 when the world (at least my little 13-year-old world in one corner of Canada) went GREEN, every product was PHOSPHATE FREE, was BIODEGRADABLE, etc. The term GREEN sold well; Green Shampoo, Green Cereal, Green green vegetables. By 1994 the selling power of the GREEN "brand" had faded. Wasting no time to get in on the Organic game so vogue these days, Gordon & Macphail, owners of Benromach Distillery, have introduced an Organic whisky. (I am sure if there could be 'free range' whisky, someone would try to manufacture it)
As far as manufactring goes, Scotch whisky production is already way ahead of other industries in terms of re-use and recycling of materials and energy efficiciency/recycling. And as if the ingredients of Scotch whisky weren't natural enough, this whisky, the first certified Organic single malt whisky, uses pure spring water, 100% organic Scottish barley, organic yeast, and filled to organic virgin American oak casks from carefully managed forests. I think even the two men who work at the distillery had organic yogurt and porridge oats for breakfast each day of production after doing their yoga and reading chapters from Naomi Klein's new book.
Just east along the devil-horned bit of the Moray coast from Burghead, 4th-7th century Pictish capital and home of the maltings, is Findhorn, an appropriate neighbour to makers of the first organic single malt whisky. The Findhorn Ecovillage is a pioneering village of sustainable living that began back in 1962 with a bunch of optimistic hippies (teachers, scientists, musicians, artists), is one of the largest holistic communities in the world, has a eco-footprint HALF that of the UK average, and my friend HB was born there. Whisky casks, already a re-used product, are usually used to hold new spirit 3 to 5 (or more) times. The pic to the right shows a house at Findhorn made from ex-whisky cask staves when they were of no more use to the spirits industry.
For more distillery info and to see all Benromachs had on the mission click HERE.
TASTING NOTES:
Woody and warm, like a freshly electric-sharpener-sharpened pencil, with a whole fruit basket of aromas: hard pears, pineapples, green grapes, green bananas. Some instant coffee, very sugary tea, and Hershey's Kisses amid yet more oak, honey and nougat, and the smell of soil on your clothes.
Sweet like toffee that builds up becoming more oaky and toasty but is brought back down to earth with honey and the most robust barley taste of any whisky I have every had. Finish gets very grippy with oak, like bourbon, and dries with flavours of dehydrated apple and apricots, a bit of a lemony zest, and even more wood workshop.
SUMMARY:
Dave Broom has described this whisky as "edgy and plain with hard malt and freshly planed wood," (WhiskyMag Iss.58) and while I can understand where his desciptors are coming from, I don't see them as negatives in the least. I totally dig the nose with its distinctively barley-spirit tone just amped up with sanded wood and fruits, love the chewy mouthfeel and the flavour development from butterscotch syrup to hard oak and the richest and spiciest barley can get back to waxy American chocolate (box of Pot of Gold) and museli breakfast cereals to the finish which gets a bit too gripping with oak for my tastes (at least today) to make this a perfect drop. This latter point is a minor criticism, however, demanding that rather than not drinking Benromach Organic at all (which would be a major loss), we just drink it faster or alongside a refreshing lager or a pint of water. It is this drying effect that keeps control of the sweet chocolaty flavours creating a really wonderful balance. Absolutely delicious, in my mind, and without a doubt one of the best whiskies I have yet had on the Malt Mission.
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Benromach Peat Smoke
Speyside Single Malt Whisky
46% abv
£26
Another Speyside week on the Malt Mission. Sure, its a Bank Holiday Monday and Notting Hill Carnival, but there ain't no rest for the whik-sy. Well, sort of. Today's malt has been guest-tasted by JM and some of the Benromach info is blatantly lifted from author and historian Gavin D. Smith. View his site HERE.
"Back in 1983 the old Distillers Company Limited closed nine distilleries in an effort to cut over-supply and lower the level of the 'whisky loch.' Two years later, the firm went on to shut a further ten distilleries. Some of those silent distilleries are long gone, buried beneath retail and residential developments, but others have happier tales to tell. Tales of restoration and revival.
One such distillery is Benromach, built in 1898 on the outskirts of Forres, close to Elgin. Benromach closed in 1983, but was saved from oblivion by the internationally renowned Elgin-based independent bottler, wholesaler and retailer Gordon & MacPhail, who purchased the site in 1993 and set about reviving the distillery. It was subsequently reopened by HRH the Prince of Wales in its centenary year."
Benromach Peat Smoke uses the same intensity of peating as Laphroaig, 55 ppm. Gordon & Macphail has been produced a batch of peated malt annually and this one, matured in first-fill bourbon casks, is from 2000. It serves as a peated counterpart to the Benromach Traditional, a great value malt that has not yet appeared on the mission, but that I have used at tastings for years.
I tasted this at the Whisky Fringe, and tasted it with JM and Beth at the OddBins Wine Fair. They liked it and brought a bottle back to Canada with them. Again, these tasting notes are theirs.
TASTING NOTES:
Mineral water with a squeeze of lemon/lime, peat, iodine, wet steel, cantaloupe, damp organic (compost-y)
Nice thick, oily mouth feel. First banana popsicles or sorbet, mellowing into dry toast, salty soda crackers, then big peat. Grainy, dirty fresh spinach flavor. Evaporates and takes all the moisture out of my mouth. Feels like I drank a big bottle of cheap table chardonnay or ate a big bag of salty ballpark peanuts in the shell. Beth says the roof of her mouth feels like she scraped it on dry bread.
SUMMARY:
Mood whisky for sure. Not something I'm going to have more than one or two of at one sitting, but enjoyable and interesting just the same. It seems much simpler and more straight forward than the first time I had it, must have been influenced by something else that I'd been drinking that day... it was a wine and spirits fair, after all. Beth says it's her favorite in my collection right now (weird).
Back to Dr. Whisky typing now, fresh and fruity with great characteristics of bourbon maturation and waterfalls of peat. But I agree with JM, there is something about the dryness that works against the initial sumptuous mouthfeel. Overall, a tasty and well-priced treat from the happy-to-experiment Gordon & Macphail, and worth noting that it was really enjoyed by a woman who "doesn't like smoky whiskies".
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Benromach Sassicaia Wood Finish
Single Malt Scotch Whisky
45% abv
£28
Benromach distillery was built in 1898 in Forres, near the mouth of the river Findhorn. Very difficult to find as a single until Gordon & Macphail bought the distillery in 1993. It is only since 2004 that the current owners have been releasing official bottlings and they have been anything but disappointing.
Things of note about this, the smallest working Speyside distillery:
-Malt is peated to 12ppm
-fermentation is unusually long (115 hours)
-stills are heated by steam plates
-spirit receivers are made of wood
The core range includes Benromach Traditional, 18 yo old, 21 year old, 25 year old, cask strength 1980, vintages 1968 and 69, Port Wood finish, Tokaji finish, and the first fully certified organic single malt, Benromach Organic. The later bottling has been so popular that keeping up with demand has been a real challenge.
This malt is just 5 years old and finished for an additional 27 months in casks that previously held Sassicaia wine. Sassicaia is a super-Tuscan wine, which, in my non-wine educated mind, means it is fancy. It is apparently quite expensive and sourcing the cask could not have been an easy task. More here on Sassicaia.
TASTING NOTES:
Jammy vanilla french toast. Berries and malt, oats. Lively with youthful vitality. Distinct smoky waves over the fruitiness.
Peppery and fruity, marmalade, cooked fennel, sweet and satisfying in the mouth. Moves from deep, very ALIVE flavours, to a slightly drying finish decorated with wood smoke.
SUMMARY:
This whisky taught visiting friend Beth the distinction between 'smoky' and 'peaty'. A finish that is interesting and unique without ever silencing the presence of the malt whisky, just accenting it. Clever use of young spirit and posh wine casks = good value.
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