Benriach The Original Ten

N: lots going on. Apple and pear-like fruit notes, accompanied by sweet honey, a richer butter note, vanilla, and also featuring whiffs of lavender, and something like new rubber tyres or a carpet store. P: much smoother than the nose would suggest, with more caramel and toffee notes. The fruit is more like stewed fruit, like apple pie. Features almonds or marzipan, and hints of buttered toast. F: not so long, but pleasing and refreshing with lingering pear. Very drinkable, with a good, varied yet balanced profile. Hard to get tired of this quickly.

Rating: 14/23 Apparently I tried the old BenRiach 10 and thought it was fairly mediocre. I'll be interested to see if this one seems like a step up, a step down, or just a rebranding. N: Hmm, I like this nose. It's sweet with a sort of lightly waxy dry wood character to it that adds body but doesn't overwhelm it at all. There are bits of fruit coming out, but not taking over the stage - tangerine, orange, cherry, currant. The fruit adds a nice sweetness that combines well with the moderated maltiness. There's some nice lightly toasted grain going on in the back. It's a very traditional scotch profile, but it has a nice amount of complexity and impeccable balance. P: There's a nice fullness to this as the malt shows through. Spices (ginger with a touch of white pepper) come out immediately. The unobscured nature of the malt and the bit of bite give away that this is fairly young, but there aren't any problems with it. The malt flavor itself is quite nicely executed and displays the gran's character well. There's a slight vegetal character to it, but not too much. I taste some waxiness, but not much barrel. Disappointingly, there's very little fruit to be found here. An occasional hint of tangerine, but that's about it. Some vanilla from the barrel does come out and some dry (lightly toasted?) grain mixes well with the mild wood flavor. After sipping this for a while - not a long while, mind you, seeing as I only have 50ml of it - it hit me that there's a vanilla flavor paired with fresh wood that reminds me of Pure Scot Virgin Oak. I'm thinking that there's some virgin French oak involved here, and now I notice that this was indeed aged to some extent in virgin oak. F: The rich malt lingers and the sweeter side fades away, though it never turns bitter. Not a very complex finish, but a solid one. Oh, there is actually this sort of alcohol bite when I breathe out on the finish though. That part isn't so good. - Conclusion - This is definitely better than Compass Box Artist's Blend (13/23) and it's therefore also better than BenRiach 10 (12/23). I do wish that this had more fruit, but it's actually quite good as it is. The Compass Box has more fruit and vanilla, but it also has substantially more of a bit. I wouldn't put this way above it. Glen Grant 18 (18/23) is oilier and fruitier. It's definitely a different profile, so that's down to personal preference preference, but it's also much more complex and not as youthful. I won't say that the Glen Grant is blowing this out of the water, but it's definitely substantially better. I don't think I'd go above a 16 for this. Unfortunately, I don't seem to have much of a similar style to this in the 14 to 16 range. Old Pulteney 12 (14/23) seems a bit more muddled than this, so I'd take this over it. Not by a large margin though. There's enough alcohol here on the finish that I don't think I can go above a 15. Knappogue Castle 12 (15/23), although different flavor-wise, has a similar approach of having a single flavor that it does quite well. I kind of like the Knappogue Castle's hedonistic nectar sweetness better, but it isn't a decisive win. So this is either a 14 or 15. I agonized for a while before concluding that the alcohol on the finish here is just a bit much and settling on a 14.