Benriach 1971, 40 years, Bourbon Hogshead Cask No. 1947, 124/229, 49.8% abv.

BenRiach Distillery Company Limited, formed by two South African investors, Geoff Bell and Wayne Keiswetter, and Scotch whisky expert Billy Walker, bought the relatively unknown BenRiach distillery in 2004. One of the methods Billy Walker used to turn the BenRiach distillery around was releasing older, quality stock in the form of single cask releases. This 1971 Benriach single cask is batch 8 of the series and is one of the oldest ones. Billy Walker used the same single cask approach for GlenDronach and Glenglassaugh distillery, which they bought in 2008 and 2013, respectively.

Nose: coconut and pineapple, tropical, yellow squashes and meaty fruits, a strange smoothness, not strong. An extremely special set of aromas.

Palate: full bodied, not strong in terms of flavor, light tobacco, soft tofu, white chocolate, some sort of citrus, generally tropical, hints of cocount, pineapples, mangoes, guava, grapefruit, loquat, hard to describe.

Finish: short, light oak, tingling sensation.

Amazingly good!!! This was an amazing dram, very well balanced, but towards the polished wood and earthy tobacco side though. The nose was the best part, bringing through a variety of select tropical and special fruity aromas. Finish was too short and for such a tropical and sweet juice, the finish was a little plain, but did help emphasize the uniquely amazing tasting experience I just had. This is one of those few bottles where I actually experienced most of what was described on the tasting notes written on the label. Had this at Salon de Shimaji, Tokyo, Japan.

Grade: A

Jim Murray’s 2012 Whisky Bible, 96.5 points
whiskyfun.com, Serge, 93 points

Image courtesy of Eric Yee.

Eric Yee

🇭🇰 🇺🇸(LA, SF) -> 🇯🇵 (京都, 東京) -> 🇰🇷 (서울, 부산)