K&L Sale Scotches

K&L has recently lowered the price on a number of their exclusive barrel picks, so I picked some up...because I'm a sucker for a sale.

BenRiach 1994 Peated, 19 years old, Cask 7187, Bourbon Barrel, 53% abv ($110)

The nose has heavy, sharp peat. The palate has sweet peat notes and then gets a bit sour.  It has a great peaty finish on the nose.  This is very BenRiach with its sharp peat notes.  It's a bit one note, as the peated BenRiachs tend to be, but it's quite decent.


Bowmore 2001 Signatory, 12 years old, Cask 1371, Refill Sherry, 59.1% abv ($59)

The nose opens with honeycomb candy (or Bit-O-Honey for those that remember that). Then, there are some fuel type notes, like you dropped your Bit-O-Honey in a mysterious puddle at the mechanic's shop, plus peat and sulfur. The palate opens with a similar mix of flavors - lots of honey plus peaty, fuel type notes. Then there are some sulfur notes which come to dominate the late palate. The finish is mostly peat.  This one is a bit weird, but I like it. It's sweet and bold and leaves you feeling peaty, and for $60, it's a great deal.


Laphroaig 1998 Signatory, 15 years old, Cask 700386, Refill Butt, 59.1% abv ($127)

The nose has tropical fruit. The palate is pure peaty Laphroaig with a very light fruitiness that stays on the palate for the finish, but the nasal exhale of the finish is pure peat.  If this was indeed, aged in a sherry cask, it must have been used multiple time as there is almost no sherry character, but it's quite good as a straight forward Laphroaig...tastes like something that could have been a distillery bottling.


That's three very solid peaters from K&L.  They were all good, but the Laphroaig was my favorite, followed by the Bowmore and then the BenRiach.  That being said, I generally tend not to favor BenRiachs as much as some others do; if you're a BenRiach fan, you may well like that one the best.

The Classic BenRiach

BenRiach is one of the more interesting distilleries around today. Located in the Speyside region of Scotland, it was traded among big companies for many years before being purchased by an independent group of businessmen in 2004. The same group now owns the GlenDronach distillery as well.

One of the things I like about BenRiach is that they make mini bottles of more than just their youngest expression. They sell two four-mini bottle sets: (1) the Classic Collection includes the no age statement Heart of Speyside, 12, 16 and 20 year olds; (2) the Peated & Classic Collection includes the 12 and 16 year old along with the peated 10 year old Curiositas and peated 21 year old Authenticus. Both sets run from $24 to $30, and they are available at Hi-Time and Binny's.

Since I've already written up Curiositas, I thought I'd dive into the Classic Collection (prices listed below are for full sized bottles).


BenRiach Heart of Speyside, 40% abv

I didn't include a price for this non age statement version of BenRiach because I couldn't find it listed for sale on any of the US sites. It may be that the miniature is the only version available here. The nose on this is all fruit with pears, green grapes and Riesling. The palate is white grape juice with malt in the background. The finish is short-lived, a bit fruity, a bit soapy. This is a very light, fruity malt. Not exactly my style but not unpleasant.


BenRiach 12, 43% ($40)

The nose on the 12 year old definitely has some of the fruity notes from the Heart of Speyside, but they are more muted and have more malt. The palate is less fruit juice than fruit wine with some more complex fruit notes, such as berries, overlayed on a malty canvass. The finish is more malty than fruity.


BenRiach 16, 43% abv ($70)

At 16 years, the malt has overtaken the fruit on the nose, but there is still substantial fruit. The fruit on the palate is now more of a dried fruit variety with plenty of malt on all sides; there's also a slight sulphur note. It still has a fairly light character and is quite sweet.


BenRiach 20, 43% abv ($100)

The nose on this one is quite mild with floral notes. The palate has shed its fruit in favor of sweet malt. It's definitely richer than its younger siblings, with malt and just a whisper of ash. The finish gives you lingering malt and a bit more of the floral note that was on the nose.


I can't say I'm overly impressed with the BenRiach line. Sweet and fruity is simply not my favored flavor profile, but if it's yours, you may want to dig into these. I did enjoy the less fruity 20 year old, but at $100, there are many other malts I would pick ahead of it.

Whiskey Wednesday: I am Curiositas (Smoky)

If you are interested in Scotch, and you do some reading or web browsing, one of the first things you will see people do is to describe the various regions of Scotland and their styles of whiskey. Typically it goes something like this:

Lowlands - light
Speyside - smooth and classic, lots of sherry
Highlands - rugged, woody, salty
Islay - super smoky peat monsters
Islands - also smoky

The problem is these rules are full of exceptions. First, it's important to note that the regions originated as taxation divisions; they had nothing to do with the style of whiskey being produced.

Second, there is substantial debate about whether location means anything in the production of whiskey. Many distilleries don't use local barley or even Scottish barley and some don't age their whiskey on site.

These geographic labels and the corresponding flavor profiles, at best, represent traditional styles that are predominant in the region. At worst, they are a lazy shorthand which allows us to escape really delving into what the whiskey tastes like.

To wit, Glenmorangie and Dalmore have quite different flavor profiles but are fairly close neighbors in the Highlands.

Similarly, not all Islays are smoky. Bruichladdich and Bunnahabhain make predominantly unpeated whiskies and Caol Ila also makes an unpeated version. Peating, of course, is just a matter of how you cook the grains...anyone can do it.

And that brings us to BenRiach's Curiositas, a peated Speysider. For years, BenRiach was a go-along, get-along Speysider, making smooth, floral malts. In 2002, however, owner Pernod Ricard shut it down. Luckily, two years later, a South African group bought BenRiach and reopened it as an independent distillery.

After that, strange things started happening. The distillery began churning out new releases, including new age expressions, "finished" whiskies (those put in different types of barrels for final maturation) and a peated whiskey appropriately named Curiositas. All of this innovation won it much praise from whiskey lovers along with some suspicion from the Speyside establishment. BenRiach joined Bruichladdich, Compass Box and Buffalo Trace in the exclusive club of independent, innovative whiskey producers.


Tasting

The BenRiach, Curiositas, 10 years old, 46% alcohol

BenRiach makes no bones about its peat-soaked malt. The peat comes right at you in the nose, close to the smell of Bruichladdich's PC5, but with some fruity scents underneath...I smell pears. The taste that hits you first is some sweetness, an almost sugary sweetness, followed by smoke. The finish returns to fruit and a bit of the smoke.

I don't think I've had a smoky Scotch that was this sweet and fruity before. The ten year old Ardbeg of a few years ago had some sweetness, but not this fruity sweetness. It's really a new kind of smoky whiskey. The combination of sweet and smoke is reminiscent of kalbi, the Korean barbecued short ribs that are marinated in a sweet but salty sauce and grilled over smoky coals at Korean BBQs (see if you find that in anyone else's tasting notes -- eat your heart out Jim Murray)!

Curiositas certainly defies regional traditions, but in a way, it's the type of smoky malt you might expect if you were to guess what a Speysider with smoke would taste like...smoke but sweetness and fruit as well.

It is aptly named.