BenRiach 26 Years Old 1997 Cask #7355 (The Duchess)

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 The Duchess, the Dutch independent founded in 2013 and known for elaborate label artwork and small-outturn single cask releases. It is part of the Game & Wildlife series series. Distilled in 1997 and bottled in 2023, the whisky was drawn from cask #7355 with a small outturn of 200 bottles for the Dutch 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 26 years in oak, the cask was bottled at cask strength of 57.1% 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.