Benrinnes 2002 11 Year Hepburn's Choice (Hunter Laing)

Rating: 10/23 I've never tried a Benrinnes before, nor have I tried a Hepburn's choice. This sample seems like it will either give me some good insight about both of them or no insight about either. This being only 11 years old, I expect some ethanol and immaturity, but I'm hoping that it at least has a clean and generally tasty flavor. N: Not much at first. A touch of wet wood. Swirling it and giving it a couple of minutes, I get some fruit (tangerine and a little supermarket orange juice) with a light grain backing. A hair on the floral side. There's a mild, musty richness as well that smells kind of like the remnants of youthful alcohol meatiness, but integrated with the grain a bit somehow. I consider it to be a good smell. There's no alcohol bite. This is an unobjectionable, mellow dram that I'm betting will be both decently enjoyable and also kind of boring and forgettable. P: Soft with a moderately viscous mouthfeel at the start, showcasing sweet tangerine and peach blending smoothly into malty richness, with a little bit of dry grain. It forms a hedonistic, round sweetness that's very approachable and mildly interesting. The other part is a spiciness that adds some character, but then erupts into a bigger burn with some unfortunate harshness. I taste some slightly dirty alcohol in with the spice. It isn't quite industrial, nor is it meaty nor sulphuric. It's just a bit like a dirty still. I'd love to say that I could at least pin down the type of spice, but it's fairly generic. A bit peppery if anything. Perhaps some sort of very faint chili pepper. At some point, some mellow wood and occasional vanilla show up. Oh, I am getting bits of supermarket orange juice at times now. And a tad of buckwheat nuttiness to the malt. This isn't the most coherent, balanced palate by any means, but it is a little complex. There are some good flavors in here, so it's unfortunate that there's that spicy harshness. F: Lingering peach and tangerine with hints of supermarket orange juice and sweet malt. A bit of that spicy burn persists as well. - Conclusion - I want to like this, but that burn isn't really acceptable. To put this side by side with another spirit that's a bit too youthful, I pulled out my bottle of Dudognon Reserve (10/23). I'd say that the two taste fairly similar in quality, though if I had to give one the nod, this would definitely be it. The Dudognon tastes a lot more like alcohol, but this has that big burn. Without either of those problems, both would definitely get higher ratings. To check how bad the burn is, I pulled out Ry3 (9/23). I'd probably say that the Ry3 has better flavor than this does, but it sure does burn more. So this kind of fills in the middle between the Dudognon and the Ry3, having the middle amount of burn, the middle amount of tasty flavor, and the middle amount of ethanol. I wish I could say that this is a Goldilocks situation, but it really isn't. I ultimately feel like despite the surprising burn here, this is closer to the Dudognon than to the Ry3, so it's getting a 10.