About 6 or 7 years ago I was a huge BenRiach fanboy. Visiting the distillery with my then infant daughter helped a lot but I genuinely liked a lot of their bottlings. Over the years that has waned a little bit with their single cask bottlings becoming more and more expensive. Of course, that’s true for all distilleries and brands, but it has lead me to not ‘follow’ any distillery as much as I did before.

To be honest, I think it’s been five years since I bought any BenRiach release. This one, however, I bought a sample of through RvB, because it is such a massively sherried whisky that I wanted to try it. See if it still is awesome or that these sherry casks have kind of lost their way.

Cadenhead’s is normally very reasonably priced, and this one isn’t any different. It clocked in at € 80, which is very acceptable for a single sherry cask whisky. Of course, going to the distillery and getting some stuff from the warehouse tasting is more awesome in regards to pricing policy, but that’s unfortunately not in the cards right now. We had to cancel our trip to Scotland because someone in Wuhan decided to eat a bat.

Anyway, back to the whisky!

Sniff:
Insanely rich sherry, with loads of almonds and cherries. Sweet and bitter notes, fruity and nutty. Also some hessian and a bit of sulfur, graphite and olive oil.

Sip:
Very gentle, for a 56% whisky. It gets more dry with a few seconds of swimming. Hazelnuts, Brasil nuts, almonds, cherries and some grapefruit too. A bit feinty, with hessian.

Swallow:
The finish is bit more focused on the red fruits, with some blackberries and strawberries. The cherries, with the stones, and almonds.

Great on the nose, but becomes slightly less interesting afterwards. The complexity is a little bit less on the palate and finish. Of course, it’s still a very tasty whisky that goes down sublime. But, apart from the nose, it’s more a drinking-whisky than a tasting-whisky.

87/100

BenRiach 11, 2008-2020, Sherry Hogshead, 55.9% – Cadenhead’s Wood Range