BenRiach 23 Years Old 1991 Cask #110684 (A.D. Rattray)

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. The casks from this period are now finite, held mostly by independent merchants who laid them down when the stock was originally destined for blending. This release was bottled by A.D. Rattray, established in 1868 and revived in 2004 as a single cask specialist with the Stronachie blended malt brand alongside its Cask Collection releases. It is part of the Individual Cask Bottling series. Distilled in 1991 and bottled in 2015, the whisky was drawn from cask #110684 with an outturn of just 147 bottles for the German 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 23 years in oak, the cask was bottled at cask strength of 51.8% ABV.

Ex-Bourbon American white oak (Quercus alba) was charred for the original bourbon fill, breaking down lignin into vanillin and syringaldehyde and releasing whisky lactones from the wood. The fresh-fill bourbon strips extracted much of the most aggressive oak character, leaving the BenRiach spirit to draw on the secondary layers of soft oak, vanilla and coconut. Typical tasting notes include chocolate, fresh fruit, hay-like, honey and vanilla.