BenRiach Peated Cask Strength Batch 1
Info: Made with whiskies drawn from Oloroso Sherry casks and bourbon barrels. 56% abv.
Colour: Light straw gold.
Nose: Darker and more pungent than expected, yum. Sweet autumnal fruit notes, gentle light peat smoke.
Palate: Thick, oily, creamy, sweet and tasty, awesome.
Finish: Fairly gentle, quite sweet, nice and warming. After a few mouthfuls spices build a fair bit.
Thoughts: I’m a really big fan of this, it beats some Feis Ile releases from Islay I’ve had recently for sure.
Available: Master of Malt – £58.84
Thanks to BenRiach for the sample.
SWB | Somerset Whisky Blog 
Hmm. I wonder what this “peating” process involves. This is not an island malt, it’s a Speyside, so I’m wondering if they’re doing something slightly awry to get the phenols in there…
It has been known for some distilleries to add phenols to their distillates to emulate the island malt peaty flavours. I do hope this is not the case here.
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Nope, nothing weird going on here… they use (as far as I know) a malster in the highlands (Inverness) that uses highland peat (usually from Tomintoul as far as I know)… so in terms of a process it’s the same as you’d peat any malt, be it on Islay or elsewhere. 🙂 (it’s just not using Islay peat, so it doesn’t have that coastal saltiness).
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