Celebrating traditional methods dating back to the earliest days of Benriach Distillery, Benriach Malting Season is the first expression in a century to be produced entirely using barley malted from our Speyside distillery’s historic floor maltings. The first edition of Benriach Malting Season is two-cask matured in bourbon and virgin oak barrels to bring out the wholesome, creamy flavour we find in the distillery’s floor malted spirit, giving a beautiful barley gold colour to the liquid. The expression boasts a rich aroma of barley sugar, almond fudge and poached orchard apple with smooth, rounded flavours of vanilla and honeyed pear, with a lasting nuttiness of slowly kilned malt.
Tasting Notes
Nose: Richly aromatic with barley sugar, almond fudge and poached orchard apple
Taste: Smooth and rounded with vanilla and honeyed pear, with the lasting nuttiness of slowly kilned malt
The first edition of the small batch release is comprised of 23 barrels, all distilled on 2nd November 2012, yielding 6672 bottles in total.
BenRiach is a distillery that we are lucky to enjoy in the 21st century. Built in 1887 as a sister distillery to Longmorn, it was a low-profile victim of the Pattinson Crash and closed just three years after ground was initially broken in 1900. It would take another 65 years until new owners Glenlivet would re-open the site, then to help with the malt needs of Longmorn.
Although it enjoyed a sustained period of operation during those optimistic decades to come, BenRiach was largely consigned to blends and single malts very rarely seen. The end seemed inevitable when the distillery was once again closed in 2002, deemed surplus to requirements, but the 2004 purchase by a Billy Walker-involved consortium has seen a remarkable rejuvenation for the brand.
The BenRiach Distilling Company, now under expert guidance of Brown-Forman and Master Blender Rachel Barrie, has not only introduced this otherwise-overlooked distillery to single malt lovers around the world, but also painted bright futures for later acquisitions GlenDronach and Glenglassaugh
