BenRiach 1984 – Peated Cask #4049

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 comes from BenRiach's Single Cask Bottling, Batch 4, the modern programme of small-outturn cask releases. Cask #4049, distilled in 1984 and bottled in 2007, yielded a small outturn of 294 bottles for the French 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 22 years in oak, the cask was bottled at cask strength of 54.2% ABV.

The ex-Port cask previously held a fortified Portuguese wine, contributing anthocyanin pigments and sugar residue that interact with the BenRiach spirit. Port-finished single malts typically develop red berry, plum and soft tannin character, with a deeper colour drawn from the cask staves.