BenRiach Cask Edition 24 Years Old 1997

BenRiach sits on the Elgin plain in Speyside, founded in 1898 by John Duff. Through much of the late 20th century the distillery operated quietly as a filler for Chivas blends, with single malt releases rare until the Billy Walker era from 2004 onwards. Heritage stock from this period is finite, with the distillery selectively releasing remaining casks under Brown-Forman. This release is part of the Cask Edition, the small-outturn single cask programme BenRiach has run alongside its core range since the Billy Walker era. Cask #7776, distilled in 1997 and bottled in 2021, yielded an outturn of just 166 bottles for the European market.

BenRiach distils on two pairs of copper pot stills, with ogee-shaped wash stills feeding onion-shaped spirit stills under steam heat. Fermentation runs between 48 and 100 hours in stainless steel washbacks on Mauri liquid yeast, with new make collected at 68% ABV before filling to cask. After 24 years in oak, the cask was bottled at cask strength of 53.6% ABV.

The ex-Rum cask previously held sugarcane spirit aged in tropical conditions, which had accelerated extraction of oak vanillins and esters into the original rum and concentrated tropical fruit congeners. The BenRiach inherits a softened, sweetened cask with banana, pineapple and demerara character pulled forward from the residual rum. Typical tasting notes include chocolate.