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 #2803 and bottled in 2020, this 1998 vintage totalled 692 bottles for the Italian 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 52.7% ABV.

The ex-PX butt previously held the densest of sherries, made from sun-dried Pedro Ximenez grapes with residual sugar levels above 400 g/L. The cask carries glycerol and complex Maillard-reaction compounds into the BenRiach, producing the dense raisin, fig, dark molasses and burnt sugar character that defines PX-finished whiskies.