MrWizard's Ramblings

An excellent tasting by BenRiach brand ambassador Rory Glasgow. BenRiach has a complicated history of their distillery, ownership, bottle branding and spirits. You can and should read it elsewhere but the short current version is all of their older recipes are going away and are replaced by a complete rebrand with the new ownership. While it’s arguably good news for the brand as it builds a stronger identity. Its bad news for the fans of their existing or older bottlings. We’ve tasted some of their older bottlings, before the rebrand.

Benriach 10
Fruity, tasty, malty, stone and orchard fruits with pears and apples present. Tasty, uncomplicated. Great beginner malt that showcases itself well.
Score: B

Benriach 10 Curiositas (Peated)
Heavy Islay Peat. Fans of heavily peated expressions, rejoice! Too much peat for me. Not a fan (I’m not a fan of young peat regardless). It also smothers the somewhat delicate malt character of a 10 year old without much to balance itself. Had to choke it down to get to the next sample. Take regular 10, add heavy smoke, get Curiositas. If you like young heavily peated malt, it could be your thing, there are arguably better more established Islay malts out there in the price range.
Score: C-

Benriach 21
Properly tasty this one. But it reminds me of old malt casks style. Very light, lots of perfume, flowers, age, and malt, not too much wood, sherry flavor or memorable things present. This surprisingly different from what the bottle description led me to believe. Much more mature and balanced 10. To be honest… it was so unmemorable… I don’t recall much about it in less than 24 hours after I tasted it. I’m glad I have tried it… Tasty, yet nothing special.
Score: B

Benriach 21 Temporis (Peated)
With disclaimer that I don’t enjoy young peat, old peat is a very different experience. For context, the phenols (smoke flavor) transform with time from nearly pure smoke to much more complicated and nuanced smoke-related accents as they bind to other particles in the liquid or combine into more complex protein chains with age. This bottling has ridiculously long umami aftertaste that strongly reminds me of smoked gouda (the round kind). As it’s something that I grew up with as one of my favorite treats, the flavors hits the right notes for me here. Delicious and well worth trying even for causal smoke lovers. As a fair warning, the smoke in this one is very clingy so the flavors will stick in the mouth for a very long time and will not make for good experience for a non-fan of smoked cheese.
Score: B

Benriach ??? (Discontinued 20 years old Dark Blue Label)
This is delicious. A mix of ex bourbon and sherry barrels. Its older Benriach in all its glory, really good stuff. Oddly reminded me of some of the better Kirkland Branded (Alexander Murray) bottles from Costco. But in general, the profile is reminiscent of Glenmorangie 18. Woody, sweet, a bit of sherry finish. High flavor complexity, not heavy handed. The only real downside is that it tastes all too-familiar to me. Its excellent, but not memorable. If I closed my eyes, it could have been anything in that general flavor profile.
Score: B+

Overall BenRiach:
Some of their expressions are delicious and the spirit marries well with fresh PX casks. It is a shame that they don’t use those enough in their maturation. Especially with new recipes and rebrand, while new bottles are going to be still single malt, they’re going to be single malt blends from different barrel types. I cannot call myself a fan of the distillery based on what I’ve tried from them. With their generic single malt profile try these, yes. Buy more interesting bottles from other distilleries, also yes.

– Benriach revisit… Simple blurbs!

Honestly, just read this article which I generally agree on with tasting notes on…. https://www.drinkhac … oky-10-and-smoky-12/

Original 10
Quite sweet and fruity, tasty, malty, stone and orchard fruits with pears and apples present. Tasty, uncomplicated. Great beginner malt that showcases itself well.
Score: B

Benriach Smoky 10
Sweet and reasonably lightly smoked variation of the regular 10. The peat doesn’t overwhelm but works well together. Somewhat reminds me of lighter version of Westland Winter Storm. Nothing super outstanding but light peat and sweet malt works well in it’s favors. Quite solid recommendation for someone that doesn’t mind a little bit of peat in their malt. Still this is a 10… so subtle or any deep flavors didn’t get a chance to develop too much.
Score: B

Benriach the 12
This smells right! This is basically Glendronach Portwood and Aberlour’s Casg Annamh had a love child. Frankly it’s a sweeter version of Casg due to port casks. The nose is amazing. But it’s arguably a little too sweet and too dessert-like on the palate. The aftertaste is a slight letdown due to fading fast and lacking anything ‘interesting’… A good, but not outstanding example of triple-cask that’s a little too sweet trying to pretend it’s not. Overall, I do enjoy it but it’s got an identity crisis. Too sweet to be a ‘regular’ expression, too blandly labeled to be a dessert (See “Glenmorangie A Tale of Cake”), it really feels like a missed opportunity here for Benriach. By differentiating the 12s as ’sweet’ variants (See Glendronach Portwood and Balvenie Caribbean Cask), Benriach is competing with their own 10 which are entirely different ball game. Unfortunately, for the average consumer the fact that 12 and 10 are priced and labeled nearly the same may cause some serious confusion and could hurt the brand down the line as average consumer doesn’t typically read fine-print on the label about casks. The pricing doesn’t help either: Why is this priced $50 in Total Wine while The Ten is $56?! Definitely a favorite if you like the malt to be on the sweeter side… Coming into this blind… This wasn’t what I was expecting. I would like to be clear here… It’s great when tasted blind… It’s also a departure from the rest of the regular bottlings with very little warning.
Score: B+

Benriach the Smoky 12
Sherried peat without being overwhelming. This is a great example of a sweet peat style. Higher smoke content and much more pronounced sherry/marsala blend compared to the 10 this does stick around my palate for quite a while and even if I’ve admitted that I’m no fan of peated whiskeys, this amount doesn’t bother me too much for an occasional drink though it’s right on the edge there. The plus of the peat the aftertaste lasts and lasts and lasts basically forever. A very good one to enjoy, provided you don’t mind some sweet smoke in your palate. With sherry and marsala sweetness masking just about anything negative here. The only real downside is that it’s not older and of course with the ‘masking’ I’ve already mentioned there’s not much in the secondary subtle flavor department.
Score: B

Scoring Breakdown: https://www.aerin.or … age=scores_breakdown