BenRiach Distillery, Scotland     founded: 1898 | active
For more detailed mapping of the distilleries in the area from our whisky map page, use this link.

Our host threw away all of our carefully-crafted notes, so the following is an approximation of thoughts collated 3 1/2 months after the event...

I think most of us thought this was the standard 12yo, rather than a special sherry cask release. It actually behaved like a decent opening of a standard range. It gave off simple, pleasing sherry smells - not overly rich, not much dried fruit or anything, just sweet sherry scents.

OK, this has a big sherry sweetness. It's not a sherry bomb by any means, it's not the biggest of sherry influences, yet it's pretty much created 100% of the influence in this whisky. Overly sweet for some, and pretty simple. Yet, it's delivering a nice, balanced and sweet dram, and you'd suppose that's what it's trying to do - job done.

Finishes might be a stretch to remember now, but the simple, sweet, sherry vibes no doubt continued - it wasn't the biggest of whiskies though, so don't expect glorious lingering mouth-tingles or anything.

Please note: the scores below are very limited by the notes being lost - the overall score best represents our collective memory, it won't be too far off being representative.

~£37 (70cl)

WhiskyBase: BenRiach 12-year-old   |   https://www.whiskybase.com/whisky/8340/benria

We've always scored out of 10 in our group (see number in red box, below), with scores regularly given across that spectrum. The value out of 100 below is adjusted to the scale most commonly used for whisky reviews, to allow for better comparison.

77 / 100