Tastes

I am a small fanboy of BenRiach. I like them for their incredible range and a lot of courage with some interesting exotic cask flavors to their really great traditional Speyside character. There were a few expressions that I didn’t like too much but the most of what I had was really good. That is why I had the 16y on my wishlist for some time. I had a dram of it before but after that I found out that it isn’t in production anymore. But then some day when I was browsing through the shelves of my favorite local whisky shop I encountered a surprise. In that store (because of alphabetical order) BenRiach is located at the very bottom of one of the B-shelves. I knew all BenRiach bottles they had there but suddenly there was a hole where a week before the last Temporis bottle was standing. I kneeled down to see if there was a bottle to be put to the front again (minor OCD ;) ) and there it was: a really dusty white tube with a bright blue printed “16” on the front. I couldn’t believe it - all this time there was still a bottle hidden behind the front row of other expressions. And it still had the original price of 54€ (around 64$) too where online it goes for at least 50% more if you can even find it. This bottle is a 2015 batch and must be one of the last ones before they removed it from the lineup. So here we go. Nose: I poured this neat into a Norlan glass and after just a few minutes the whole room is filled with that very familiar BenRiach aroma. Dried fruit, oranges, toffee, baked apple, raw grainy cereals, intense baking spices, a bid like fresh pale beer, sour prickly candy, generally more on the sweet side, rich with a nice complexity. Palate: slightly sweet, fruity, lightly spicy, nutshells, dried fruit cooked in those spices with orange oil, charred wood, fruity candy drops Finish: oaky, a good bunch of herbal essential oils, slightly acidic like the mentioned orange oil, less fruity and more spices with rich cask-wood aromas, it ends with a delightful chili burn with wood and spices. (Whatever you do - don’t add water. It really doesn’t do it any good but dilutes it unnecessarily and spreads the nicely put together aromas apart. Reduces all of what you discovered earlier.) A very nice and enjoyable whisky. Not too complicated but with a some nice contrasting variety between smell and taste that in combination are just great. I like it.

I had a bottle of the 18y Viking Pride and wanted to see if it is really necessary to buy that when you can save 30 Euros when going for this only 2 years younger version. It is not a viking theme expression this time but instead part of the animal-themed line. Also as far as I know this is one of the higher ABV Highland Park bottlings with its weird 44,5% ABV. Even the 18y only has 43%. Nose: delicious, fruity, red apples and grapes, mild peat that is not very intense at all but still characteristic. Milk- and white chocolate, a bid briny as well, ripe pineapple, vanilla cookies, a bid of banana and nice red currant on top of everything. Palate: very delicious and now very signature Highland Park, salty and not sweet in the same way as its bigger brother, some sour dried orchard fruits, marzipan Finish: very nice as well, quite dry, very oaky, intense dry spices with some smoke, prunes but again not sweet but more acidic and a little hot. Later ground coffee. The palate afterward gets richer and surprisingly oily sweet (the 18y didn’t have that from what I remember) while the finish becomes even more deep yet still opposing drier. So in conclusion: the regular 18y is a tad better and probably worth the extra money if you like HP in general. I don’t want to put my finger on it but I wanna assume they used 2nd or 3rd fill sherry casks instead - maybe even the ones they used for the 18y before. Who knows. Or they gave it a lot less time in the finishing casks or used bigger ones. So if you just want the occasional HP experience this one fulfills that purpose for sure. If you are a fan though you will miss some intensity that the 18y delivers better. I still like it. I will give the 12y another go soon and then decide for myself which will be the permanent HP shelf bottle. (I’m still very much interested in the Triskelion and The Dark but they are another league price-wise. But I am curious how those compare.)

There is something to this whisky that speaks to me and I don’t know exactly what it is. Maybe the name, maybe the design, maybe the modest inconspicuousness, maybe the fact that no one seems to talk about it. Anyway, I tasted the 24y some months ago and found it very unimpressive. I thought afterwards that I maybe just had a bad day, my palate was off or the sample I had just was weird. So I got this comparably very cheap 12y-bottle to give it another try - because it still was on my mind for some reason. Nose: fruity and fresh, a good balance of sour & sweet, the obligatory apples and oranges with honey and vanilla just as you know it from teen-highland whiskies. It is mild but charming. A bid like toast dipped in white wine. Well balanced but not very complex - an easy, polite and compatible whisky. Palate: sweet almost fruit-juice in the beginning, then a good bunch of mead. Finish: some oriental spices, not sweet anymore, the the wood influences get more intense with every sip. So do spices including hot peppers. After the first few sips the nose gets better - feels enriched with some added fresh green herbs. But still very mild and uncomplicated. And even less sweet. The palate gets a bid more woody bitter but not in a negative way at all. All in all I kinda like it. It is nothing impressive. But the tasting notes are mature and I like that it doesn’t go into the sweet spectrum extensively. For a whisky that young, with that low ABV and at that low price it is a fine dram, that fits an evening outside after a physical activity of your choice with a nice fresh green leaf-salad with garlic bread.

After a few glasses of this bottle that I opened couple of weeks ago I will try to give a proper review. I have been in quite a few conversations about the new design and it looks like I am the only one so far who likes the new design better than the old one. Of course it comes down to subjective opinions but there are still a lot of the old designs out there - so everyone can still get his / her favorite. I myself actually waited several weeks to find a retailer who has the new designs in stock. But to my knowledge the whisky itself is unchanged. I had a sample of the 10y before and really liked it. So I thought I can’t go wrong with the 15y. And sure you can’t. The first-fill-only premise of Benromach definitely adds to the experience. Nose: spiced dry fruits - cereals with trail mix - a very awesome mix of fresh, sweet and spicey - almost a bid salty - very rich - like buttered warm sweet corn with a pinch of grainy sea salt - then strawberries, green mango, raspberries, red grapes without being very sweet - soft chocolate flakes - also a bid like a fresh tapped beer (IPA-like) - only a hint of peat but so much that it definitely contributes a noticeable part of the overall experience. It is just so good. Palate: toasted dry spices of all sorts (juniper, pepper, nutmeg, cloves ... that kind ... with some salt) like the rub of a nice roast - plus a good bunch of dry herbs - more on the dry and less oily spectrum - plus a mild sweetness that nicely accompanies the spicy character and that makes it rich and very interesting - the peat gets a little more noticeable now. Finish: nicely woody - the spices cover your whole tongue and throat for a long time All in all a very great whisky if you like the more serious and spicy ones. I could do with a bid more smoothness / oiliness for a top tier rating. But nonetheless it is still a fantastic whisky that you can enjoy and analyze over a whole evening - it is that complex in my opinion.

(Pinkernells Islay Tasting Event) This one was the strangest of the six pours during an Islay tasting event. One of my all time favorite whiskies of all time is a Caol Ila 14y cask strength refill American hogshead single cask. This one here is a Caol Ila 15y cask strength refill American & European hogshead but not peated. And in the end end I was left disappointed. The nose is pretty basic with honey and apples, a bid of nutty marzipan and vanilla and a bid of pears. But everything mixed up and not very intense. The palate then is very mixed-fruity sweet with not much else. If you add water to bring it down from its whopping 63 % ABV to around 55 % you get a bid of cucumber as well as cooked egg-white. Strange. I am pretty sure the experience wasn’t as great as it would have been if I haven’t had 3 other very different drams (including strong peated ones) before. Maybe I will have a chance to try it again on a fresh palate some day. But I won’t be actively looking for it.

(Pinkernells Islay Tasting Event) This one really surprised me. In this tasting event when they told us “Next: Ardbeg” I thought “Yeah ok, I wonder what come after that.” I hadn’t had the “An Oa” before and honestly didn’t expect much. The Ardbeg 10 was one of the first whiskies I ever had and with a couple of tastes in the last months it got better and I really started to like it. But after I had the Corryvreckan and the Uigedail I found myself liking the regular 10y the most, so I wasn’t really that interested in other named releases. But this one was positively different and I like the 10y and this one equally much - more than the the Corry and Uige in fact. The nose was what made me raise an eyebrow. Candied walnuts, sweet cherries, very strong fresh red apples (especially the apple peel of them), marzipan and the really well placed peat in the very middle of it all. I guess that really nice nose comes from the PX influences. Well done. The palate is light and delicately sweet. It feels positively sweet and simple with a proper peat that guides you through the experience. The finish at first is a bid bland but after the second sip it goes up-hill. Gets better with every sip. And even though in the end it still doesn’t blow you away because of its honest simplicity, the nose and first impression was really something. A great sipper and a welcome alternative to both fans of the Ardbeg 10y and peat-newcomers.

(Pinkernells Islay Tasting Event) I had a pour of this before about a year ago and remember not really liking it - which is why I avoided it since. But I’m happy they poured us one of this Islay blend in this tasting event because it was a different experience. The nose is mild but nice peat with a minor sweet fruitiness. There is pineapple out of a tin can where it taste more like the tin can than the pineapple itself. It is fresh and without any noticeable alcohol on the palate. The first impression of the palate is soft and a bid oily and fills the whole mouth with its mild character. After a few seconds then the peat gets noticeable and a lot sweeter. After you let that sink in it surprisingly becomes a bid watery. The taste itself is ok but other than the peat and the sweetness there isn’t much left to enjoy for me at this point. The finish has some Islay-like smoke and only after you swallowed it you notice a bid of alcohol. The peatiness of the finish remains really long with a slight young acidicy. All in all it was ok and the peat character itself is - well - Islay. But in the end my impression is that it comes across a bid uninspired.

(Pinkernells Islay Tasting Event) The nose is pure and delicate with oranges, cinnamon, plain cookies, sweet lemon, molasses and raisins. On the palate it is fruity, citrusy and malty sweet. Is isn’t as red-fruity as the standard distillery bottlings. It actually has some Campeltown grain hints to it which is unusual for Bunnahabhain. The finish is more dry than anything else. The after taste is nice with some bitter almonds. All in all a nice balance between sweet and fruity bitter. A great endeavor into budget independent whisky.

I had this some months ago and didn’t like it then. Gave this one another go at my dad‘s and was pleasantly surprised. The peat was much more approachable than I remembered. Salty. Sweet. Slightly medicinal. A very complex collage of flavors.