Benriach Single Malt Scotch Whisky has unveiled the second version releases of Malting Season and Smoke Season, two annual expressions that mirror the standard strategies of Scotch whisky-making relationship again to the earliest days of the Speyside distillery. In a nod to Benriach’s mothballed historical past the place it remained in operation by means of ground malting and producing peated whiskies for different distilleries, these releases mirror the time-honored practices that happen as soon as per 12 months.
Much like the first version launched within the U.S. for the very first time in 2021, the second version of Benriach Malting Season is created with a novel course of that brings out the healthful, creamy taste discovered within the distillery’s ground malted spirit. For this 12 months’s version, Grasp Blender Rachel Barrie chosen Concerto barley (identical as first version), and barely elevated the barrel power – leading to a barely totally different taste profile, thus making every annual version a really distinctive expression in its personal proper.
Benriach is one in all solely seven distilleries in Scotland that continues this centuries-old custom. The ground malting technique is a extremely expert course of requiring the fragile and expert hand of a workforce of devoted craftspeople. After being steeped in water, the barley is unfold throughout the malting room ground and turned by hand over a number of days to permit for optimum germination of the barley. Utilizing their eager eye, the malting workforce decides when the barley is able to transfer to the kiln and the enduring pagoda-shaped chimney comes alive.
Bottled at 48.9% ABV, the second version of Benriach Malting Season affords aromas of malt sweetness with barley sugar and mandarin lined in white chocolate. The palate delivers honeycomb infused with citrus and orchard apple. The end options fruit, malt, and vanilla cream.
Benriach Smoke Season is a small batch launch that captures one of many distillery’s time-honored seasonal manufacturing methods the place peated spirit runs by means of its stills, representing a practice revived by the distillery over 50 years in the past. The spirit is the results of exploring 100% intensely peated malt, batch distilled and matured in first fill bourbon barrels mixed with a excessive proportion of charred and toasted American virgin oak casks.
Whereas smoky whiskies usually are not historically related to Speyside, a glance again by means of Benriach’s archives exhibits that closely peated single malts have been the popular palate of the area within the nineteenth century. Each intensely smoked and exquisitely candy, the recipe for the second version stays the identical as the primary and is made with Highland peat, which is sourced from the mainland and derived from historic timber and heather – a far cry from nearly all of peat sourced close to the ocean on the West Coast and Islay. This character produces a definite fragrant smoke that toasts the barley at Benriach, leading to an intense thread of candy smoke interwoven with the distillery’s staple orchard fruit character.
Bottled at 52.8% ABV, second version of Benriach Smoke Season smells of barbecue smoked fruit in a pine forest. The palate options candy caramel smoke and cinnamon-spiced roasted apple. The end delivers charred orange peel and hickory.
“Handed from distiller to distiller all through the generations, the ground malting course of retains a standard a part of the whisky-making course of alive with Benriach,” mentioned Grasp Blender Rachel Barrie. “In the meantime Smoke Season is a particular time of 12 months within the distillery’s calendar, and these annual releases give each the whisky novice and connoisseur the chance to find the uniquely wealthy, candy and smoky character of our Speyside single malt. At Benriach, we by no means cease exploring how fruit, oak, barley and smoke aromatics intertwine and mature in our broad vary of eclectic casks.”
Benriach Malting Season is priced at $159.99 per 700ml bottle, whereas Smoke Season prices $77.99 per 750ml bottle. For extra info, head over to the model’s official web site.
In June, Benriach introduced its Cask Version Assortment to america for the primary time.
