BenRiach Cask Edition 22 Years Old 1998

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. Drawn from cask #10298 and bottled in 2020, this 1998 vintage totalled 286 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 22 years in oak, the cask was bottled at cask strength of 52.2% ABV.

The ex-Marsala cask previously held a Sicilian fortified wine with marked oxidative ageing in the solera or perpetuum system. Marsala carries Maillard products and oxidative aldehydes including sotolon, producing burnt caramel, hazelnut and dried orange peel character in the finished BenRiach.