BenRiach 14 year 2005 Oloroso Sherry Butt Exclusive Netherlands bottling

A special bottle that I kept for a special occasion. And today happens to be my 36th birthday and I found that to be a fitting event to uncork it. BenRiach is one of my top 3 distilleries but this is actually the first cask strength I have of them. It is not that BenRiach CS are not common but they usually are really expensive. And the older 15+ regular bottlings are already so good that I never got around a cask strength single cask. But I got this in an insane deal for 50% off. This one here is 14 years aged in Oloroso sherry butt number 2576 from 2005/2020. Bottle 131 of 643 at 58.8 % ABV. Nose: sweet dried fruit with predominantly apricots and raisins, sponge cake with orange buttery custard, incredible depth and richness, the alcohol is very much in the background but gives it a thickness that reaches every corner of the nose, next to toffee / soft caramel there also is a more savory note there which is based on a wooden basis and brings some leather, very dark unsweetened chocolate, a little bid like a slow cooked red wine sauce. Interesting, deep and very enjoyable. Palate: creamy sweet but also with a strong alcoholic burn sensation at the start, you then can also taste some rough but interesting wood influences as well, then slowly some citrus fruits like ripe oranges, also fresh ginger and other wooden spices, plus again some more dried fruits but not as sweet as on the nose. Finish: the dried fruits remain with the nice spicey woody bitterness that also taste a bid like orange peel because of a subtle sour part. Added some water to bring it down to around 50% ABV. With the milder intensity the sweetness also gets less and pushes vanilla and burned sugar into the foreground but also some bitter notes. But still the very nice dried fruits plus hard apples now. Generally dried fruits are very common but I never had them as good and convincing as in this whisky - even after adding water. The palate is quite mellow now and the sweetness is on the contrary more intense now. Also the spices crawl through much more. The finish is equally serious as before and still very long and rich with a lingering bitterness (now like bitter nuts or orchard fruits seeds). All in all a very nice whisky. It has a very familiar and characteristic BenRich profile and it for sure is immensely deep and rich. I’m looking forward to how it develops in the open bottle.