Benromach 15yo

Benromach 15yo

Region: Speyside

ABV: 43.0%

Price: £73.50 

This is our first time reviewing a Benromach bottling, so a brief primer is in order. Benromach Distillery sits on the outskirts of Forres, Moray. Built in 1898 and now owned by Gordon & MacPhail, it fell silent in the early 1980s before being restored and officially reopened by HRH The Prince of Wales on 15 October 1998. Production is on a small scale. Mashing is carried out in a 1.5-tonne stainless-steel semi-lauter tun feeding four larch washbacks, with fermentation typically running for three to five days. Distillation is done using a single pair of copper pot stills, and the barley is lightly peated to around 10–12 ppm.

For today’s review, we are looking at the 15 year old, matured exclusively in first fill sherry and bourbon casks. Bottled at 43%, natural colour and non chill filtered.

Nose

The nose opens with lemon juice and a savoury note that most closely resembles bread rolls, earth, buttercream icing and fudge. The alcohol spice is minimal. Going back, and a gentle peaty backbone starts to show alongside vanilla extract, pineapple, mango and apple juice. It definitely comes across as a sherry and bourbon blend, though the bourbon notes dominate for us.

Palate

The palate is very sweet and very honey forward, there’s also some toffee apple, brown sugar, dried earth, orange peel, and cinder toffee. There’s more crack black pepper spice on the good length finish than we were expecting, and that spice does outlast the other notes. Annoyingly the mouthfeel is a little thin. There’s a touch of peat here, but it was definitely more noticeable on the nose.

Nose (with water)

With water that smoke diminishes a little and the sweetness shifts more to a synthetic style, with the fudge and icing sugar notes pushing the fruit notes into the background. Other than that it’s not wildly different.

Palate (with water)

The spice is better balanced on the reduced palate. Its gained a little bit of coffee bitterness, but it’s a fair trade off to balance the spice. The mouthfeel is pretty much unchanged, and most of the pre dilution notes remain.

Conclusion

It’s a well made blend of bourbon and sherry casks that makes for a pleasant, easy drinking dram. It works neat or with a touch of water, but we’ve no doubt it would be even better at 46% or above to give the palate a little more oomph, so we’re docking half a point from our score.

Score: 6.5/10

Value

The price is in line with many other core range 15 year olds, but quite a few of those are bottled at 46%.

• 10 - Perfection. One in a million
• 9 - Outstanding. Exceptional whisky.
• 8 - Great. Would seek this out.
• 7 - Good. Quality whisky.
• 6 - Above average. Happy to have a dram.
• 5 - Average. Drinkable whisky.
• 4 - Below average. Passable.
• 3 - Flawed. Noticeable negatives.
• 2 - Defective. Significant faults.
• 1 - Offensive. Pour it out.

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