Benriach 42 Year Old 1971 Single Cask

By Barry Bradford on March 22, 2016 • ( Leave a comment )

Benriach 42 Year Old 1971 Single Cask (40.8%, Master of Malt, 2013)

Category: Speyside single malt scotch whisky
Origin: BenRiach Distillery
Bottling: Master of Malt
ABV: 40.8%
Cost: £469.95

What they say

We’re properly over the moon about our incredible single cask bottling of single malt Scotch whisky from the BenRiach distillery! It was distilled in September 1971, 6 years after the distillery reopened following a 62 year-long slumber. It then matured for a massive 42 years until November 2013, when we went ahead and bottled it up for our Single Cask range.

Official tasting notes:

Nose: Wowsers – fruit salad, Fruit Salad sweets, in fact. Floral notes too, with a little freshly squeezed orange juice. Buttercup cough syrup and travel sweets. Honeysuckle, gooseberry and soft oak.
Palate: Quite syrupy before orchard fruit and light oak take hold and finally gorgeous blood orange develops.
Finish: Long and creamy with grapefruit, melon and more boiled sweets.
Overall: This is a gorgeous, limber 42 year old! Full of flavour, it’s simply stunning.

What I say

Sampled at The Edinburgh Whisky Blog 5th Birthday Bash this was a gift to the EWB folk and their friends

My tasting notes:

Dark amber gold (11/20)
Nose: Dank and musty dunnage warehouses, antique oak wood, woody and herbal rosemary, sage, heather honey, fruit salad, melon, peach, apple, grape, pineapple, gooseberry, orange, floral rose and hibiscus
Taste: Fruity tangerines, floral roses, herbal rosemary, sweet heather honey and Demerara sugar sweet woody sugars, a hint of citrus and then amaretti biscuits, zabaglione ice-cream / dessert.
Finish: Long, woody oak, drying and tannic, sweet fruits and further almonds and marzipan linger

Overall

An interesting expression but perhaps a little over-oaked. A nice depth of fruits can be found but there is a lot of oak wood and herbality to it that for me didn’t complement the fruit but rather overshadowed the sweeter flavours. Still an impressive single cask specimen from Master of Malt.