Abbey Whisky Benromach 11yo
Exclusive Bottling | 58.2% ABV
Score: 8/10
Something Special.
TL;DR
Supremely interesting Speysider, delivering a kaleidoscope of flavours with poise
Being Open To Opportunity Can Lead To Incredible Life Experiences
Have you ever done that thing when, having reached a really obscure point in a discussion you’re having with someone, sat and traced back the genesis of that chat? I do it all the time, mostly because I often end up chatting about odd things and thinking “how did I get here?”. It’s a by-product of having an open mind to new things; new discussions, new angles, new arguments, tangents and directions. One recent discussion we had in the office resulted in us talking about Daniel Craig’s accent in Knives Out and, having concluded that chat I sat for 5 minutes and traced back each point in our journey to that point, each moment of, “oh did you see…”, or a “well if you think that’s bad…” and arrived eventually at the origin topic: squeaky tennis shoes.
It’s dreich and cold tonight. Rain pelts off the window beside me and despite all of us putting on more layers, it’s not making us any warmer; the heating is reluctantly, remorsefully re-engaged. It smarts a little given the glorious weather we’ve had recently, but such is life in Scotland - we humbly roll along and accept our changeable circumstances. I’m in a bit of a mood to be honest with you. It was a long, mentally tiring day followed by my daughter taking the evening to chance her luck with anything and everything, and after squaring her away in bed, I’ve just spent 15 minutes getting some really nice pictures of a whisky bottle to find that I was doing so without a card inserted into the camera. The weather seems to be reflecting my inner turbulence.
Life, in my humble opinion, is about experience. We’re only here for a short time, relatively speaking, and we have the choice to open ourselves up to the subtleties of life, through niche-passions and the willingness to be surprised. I’ve become a bit intolerant of those who declare that they don’t care about these things, like watching challenging films, listening to music through reference equipment, capturing a fleeting moment of the world through a lens of a camera or many other pastimes that are typically passed off with a shrug and a muttering “I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference anyway”. This reasoning, that in some way a person is too “basic” to appreciate the intrinsic wonder in the pursuit of investigating something just for the experience, it’s lazy and ignorant to the improvement in life that new experiences and knowledge can offer. I was at a funeral a year or so ago, and on conclusion of the service I greeted an aunty I hadn’t seen in a long time, and she remarked how exciting it was that I’d taken on a new professional challenge, and how she’d always wanted to try jewellery making but didn’t have the ability to do something like that. I replied, “have you tried?” The answer was, obviously, “no”.
Engaging with people is a worthwhile pursuit and can lead to incredibly rewarding experiences. Someone visited the office the other day and sat, for nigh on 2 hours, regaling stories about his history, where he’d been and what he’d seen. His delivery of the myriad tales from his life were frenetic, stop-start and random in their direction. I sat, listening and trying to keep up. I proffered the odd comment or question to poke at something I found interesting, but I mostly sat. Listening. Afterwards a colleague remarked that I had the patience of a saint, and that they’d have shown him out long before time - too much blustering for their liking. But had I done that, I’d never have learned about the world through the eyes of this 75 year old man, who had travelled the world and seen some really quite fascinating things; East Germany weeks after the wall came down, his Irish heritage and the day his mum called to say his house had been blown up by the IRA, and the joys of being dragged before a Caribbean magistrate for charges of being a pirate. I profited from that experience, despite the time it took out my already jammed day and the challenging way his stories were delivered.
In January this year I heard rumblings of a new idea from Roy at Aqvavitae, called Dramface. The premise was simple - to offer truly independent opinions on whisky, the whisky industry and the experience of being part of the whisky community - but from the perspective of everyone, not just “experts”. I was immediately interested; I love to write, I am relatively new to whisky and I thought I could offer some interesting perspectives to the platform. Knowing how well connected Roy is - all the people he knows, speaks to and interacts with - I held off from contacting the team, reasoning that they wouldn’t want to hear from a random person with no experience, no presence in the community or even a face to put to a name. For weeks, I thought about it and each time the anxiety of missing out on an exciting experience rose. Not that I expected it to be an opportunity as a catalyst to a career change, because I love my job and I’m not looking to do something different, but my whisky hobby was becoming more and more important to me and I knew my style of writing might be of interest - writing about whisky therefore seemed like a great match. After much inner debate, I wrote a piece about whisky from my perspective and sent it via the contact form. The step of putting yourself out there to be judged is a difficult one to take - it’s easier and far more comfortable to say and do nothing and not be disappointed or worse, told you are not good enough. But the next day I received a reply to say that the team liked the article and with a few tweaks could be submitted to the site.
A few weeks on from that and I was invited to the writer’s Whatsapp group, meeting all the other fellow Dramface writers and where upcoming articles, reviews and industry discussion points are bashed out. Over the intervening months I’ve come to enjoy not just the chats but the ability to pal up with others on reviews and articles, where we can compare our differing experiences and come together to offer a multi-perspective opinion on the intrinsic quality of any whisky. We exchange samples from our own stashes and it’s starting to become a bit of a thrill when a notification pops up from the chat - something interesting is afoot. A few weeks ago the rush of excitement was palpable when Dallas asked if anyone fancied a sample of Benromach. I immediately shot my hand up - at this point in my whisky journey I’m (a bit too) keen to try anything and everything - and I’ve only tried one other Benromach, a blind sample for a Wally article. As such my memory of it was only that I didn’t really think much of it as a whisky - a bit of a let down in smell and taste. Knowing this might offer an otherwise missed opportunity to try something new, I didn’t hesitate to be that guy - the overly eager one. A long yellow box arrived unannounced soon after, carrying two tall samples of Benromach whisky.
“ Benromach was the first distillery to produce an Organic Whisky fully certified by the Soil Association. Gordon & MacPhail is continually trying continually trying new and innovative ways of adding different expressions to the brand”
A quick statement on sample receiving, outside of Dramfacers, before I carry on. I’m a bit nervous of marketing and promotional freebies, because it inherently demands loyalty to the sender - they’ve gone out their way and offered up time and money to provide you with a smell and taste experience for zero effort on your behalf. People sometimes contact me on Instahoot to say I’ve been chosen as a “special person of interest” to receive a free sample. I always try to put them off, replying that I would rather judge a whisky on merit, than from an exchange of service. Sometimes they bugger off, or sometimes they press the offer, saying they expect nothing from me, at which point I might take it, if I think it might be an interesting experience. I’ve accepted samples twice to date - once for Lochlea Sowing Season, because getting a bottle of that was impossible and I really enjoyed the First Release. And I’ve taken a sample set of Timorous Beastie, because I’d heard great things about the 18 and was interested to try their new 13 year old. To accept a free sample of something, even on the premise of it being non quid pro quo and then, through the written word, shit all over it, would be really impolite. Even if the whisky was actually crap. I’m a polite man, despite what some might say, and so there’s an immediate conflict of morals - do I take the sample, appraise it honestly knowing that if my opinion is seen to be breaching the unwritten contract of freebies, burn any bridges built? Or, never accept a free sample of a whisky ever, so that I can remain totally true to my values of honesty and integrity in my writing? What experiences might I miss out on. Probably not many, but there we go - point is, I’m not bribable.
On this occasion the sample is not a marketing sample from a distillery team looking to capitalise on a new launch or bolster their impact on the socials, but rather a sample of a single cask whisky exclusive to Abbey Whisky, located in the leafy town of Dunfermline, Fife, and was provided for one of the Dramface team to have a good look at it and proffer their opinion. Given we review all whisky, from oldies to soldies, that’s what I will do - under the framework of Dramface and the fiercely independent voice we all have, I will lay down my thoughts on what I assume is a fleeting moment in whisky time. If this whisky is not up to snuff, I’ll say as such, even if it makes for an awkward chat between Dallas and Abbey Whisky, or that it means the newly installed friendship bridge between Dougie and Abbey Whisky is dismantled quicker than the new wine cabinet at 10 Downing Street.
Review
Abbey Whisky Shop Exclusive, 1st fill bourbon, 58.2% ABV
£69.99 exclusively from the Abbey Whisky website. Ours was a free 10cl Sample
Furry labels are cool - tactile and interesting. Abbey Whisky uses them on their 10cl sample bottles and I’m wondering why I’ve not heard of Abbey Whisky (AW) until now. Started in 2008, AW grew from a wee online shop into the award winning retailer that you see before you today. Receiving a “highly commended” badge of honour from Whisky Scotland Awards in 2020, going on to receive two more “highly commended” nods in 2021. However in 2022 they’re cresting the groundswell beneath them by winning two top awards - “Online Retailer of the Year 2022” and, for their buyer Mike, the award for “Buyer of the Year 2022”. It’s safe to say that AW appears to be doing things right - I’ve only just found them so can’t yet comment much only to say that my comms with Mike have been genuine and generous.
So, an award winning retailer who has a knack for selecting accolade winning casks from various distilleries; from GlenDronach to Bimber, GlenAllachie to Daftmill, AW are able to find and pilfer superb casks of whisky upon which to affix their name, reputation and future. Reputuations, after all, take years to build and mere moments to fall - a bad streak of cask selections could see people turn away in favour of others; it’s a fickle world. Benromach welcomed the AW guys to appraise their stash, choosing cask number 388 as the one to print their name and reputation upon. Let’s hope it’s a good one.
Benromach is a Speyside distillery renowned for being the smallest in Speyside and, according to the blurb found on Master of Malt, features just 2 employees. Owned by Gordon & MacPhail, independent bottlers of huge regard, this little distillery outputs just 700,000 litres of spirit each year. Compare that to Speyside’s largest distillery, Glenfiddich, which outputs 21,000,000 litres of spirit each year, it’s easy to see why this Benromach might feel like a sapling surrounded by giant oaks. Benromach recently went through a rebranding phase, going from a tall, smooth sided bottle with hand-scribbled, painted markings on the glass - something I thought was très-fugly - to a bold, stark, brutalist style of glass shape, typeface and colours. Within many circles the rebrand is seen as not as endearing as the Bob Ross version, but I’m a huge fan of it. There doesn’t appear to be any Russian involvement in the Benromach distillery, unlike the poor sods at Lindores - any connection is not good at the minute, or indeed at many points in human history, but today we’re even more aware of the ultra-fragile tensions that exists between the Russian Federation and the west. But from a purely aesthetic position, given I’m a bit of a Brutalist geek, the Soviets have always had one clear strength and it’s brutalist architecture and graphic styles. Anyway, despite no Russian involvement, the white labels, bold cryllic-style block typeface, bronze metallic accents and vanilla coloured (with accompanying little black flecks) papers that Benromach are using now, is right up my brutalist avenue. On a packaging front I’m giving Benromach a 9/10 - one point lost for having a cardboard box in the first place.
But that matters not, should the contents be left wanting. Time for me to pick off the wax seal on this sample bottle and see what a Benromach 11 year old, matured in ex-bourbon first fill barrels and presented at a cask strength ABV of 58.2% smells and tastes like.
Nose
Smoky salt, saline. Sun warmed plastic sheet. There’s a slight tomato whiff. A wee while longer in the glass - vanilla appears in droves. Sugary creme brulee. Wood clad sweetie shop. Very strange fleeting burst of Brut Aquatonic…remember that!? Herbal basil notes with a medicinal afterpoke. Chocolate bars in the tin foil wrapping. Caramel, baking spices, chocolate sponge cake mix.
Palate
Blast of floral oil paint and tropical fruits. Potent parma violets. There’s vanilla pods but edged with a savoury thread - very interesting. It’s not cheesy but still has a funkiness to it - like a tomato note found in the nose. An earthiness permeates the face, pivoting to a burst of exotic fruitiness so bold that it catches me by surprise. Caramel chocolate sauce, this is a chameleon dram! Strawberries and smoke.
The Dregs
The very first thing that springs to mind, when I sniff the first pour of the sample bottle, is that of Springbank. It has the unwordable medicinal, earthy, plastic scent that endears so many to the Campbeltown stalwart. This Benromach has a salty arrival on the nose, obviously lending a bit of maritime feels to it, and the distillery looks, from Google Map’s perspective, quite near the point at which the Moray Firth meets the North Sea. From there the journey on the nose and palate swings wildly from savoury notes to decadent, rich sweet notes. There’s soft floral heatheriness matched with pops of more visceral perfume, like Parma Violets. Smelling the whisky constantly for a while ends with things getting a bit muddled - uniforming itself into a scent of niceness. Leaving the whisky and returning to it 5 minutes later is when things get interesting - new smells, woody and sweet mixed together, then a bold tropical yet spicy smell that reminded me of 90s deodorant sensation Brut Aquatonic. Wild.
The palate is where things come alive. I initially tried it at cask strength and it’s a face blooter. Monumental bursts of that Sprinbank-esq oil paints and tropical goodness, and again a swing into the Parma Violet stable. The first pour, 20ml or so, is tickled with a few drops of water and it opens it up to show the vanilla side of things but laced with a savoury funk. I’m really enjoying this wildly changing experience. The next dram is eagerly poured and I keep it at cask strength this time, and leave it for 20 minutes. Returning, I face a distinctly more earthy dram; soil and minerals but, another quick snifter and a tidal wave of exotic fruits whacks me across the chops. Fantastic. Distracted for a while I return once again and it’s like drinking caramel chocolate. One more gives smoked strawberries on a fire.
I can’t help myself. I keep pouring more drams to see what happens next. It’s got me. I’m at its mercy. Before long the 10cl sample is gone, constrained to the annals of my fleeting, failing memory banks. It was an absolute joy to wade through the kaleidoscope of flavours; smells and tastes that pivoted every other minute to something totally different from the preceding and back again. A tremendous experience and one that I feel genuinely sad to have concluded. I have another 10cl bottle here, right now and reaching over to pick off that wax seal I remember that I promised it to Hamish, so that he could try it too. Damn. Damn, double damn. Maybe I can ask Mike if he has another one, and that I’ll happily pay whatever he wants for it? He must still have some kicking about, so I click over to the Abbey website and have a look around for the best contact details, and to my excitement I see that this Benromach isn’t a sample of a whisky long gone, but is a sample from a bottle I can buy right now!
The price is £69.99. I could do what I have done in the past and start comparing what’s around this price bracket, what it means in the scope of Speysiders and how I’d weigh it up to justify what is clearly a high price for an 11 year old whisky in general, but instead I don’t hesitate. I add one to the basket and I purchase it immediately. I thought about buying two, but I’m about to embark on a voyage to Ireland aboard a little 31-foot sailboat, stopping at Campbeltown on the way home and in between then and now Ardnamuchan might release their new Paul Launois offering, so I have to be careful with my budget in hand. But I must have one at least, because smell and taste experiences like this don’t come around often for me. I’ve tried a few samples in the past where I’ve loved every second, but it’s been a 30ml sample of a bottle costing £400 long since sold out. To find it in a bottle that’s still available and can deliver a sensory experience like this, at a price not that much more than drams that have been stinkers (looking at you Mortlach 16) falls, for me, in the “why are you still standing there, go and get one right now” category.
I’m really interested to see what Hamish thinks. He might not have such a visceral experience as I have, and he might not get on with it at all - this is the beauty of whisky. It resonates with each of us differently. Sometimes we match in resonant frequencies and the whisky is deemed a collective jaw-dropper. But for me, this Benromach is nothing like the Cara Gold I blind tasted, and it’s nothing like the Craigellachie, Mortlach or Aberlour whiskies from this little region either. It’s unique. It’s magnificent.
What is really exciting to me about this whole experience though, is that I would never have come across this particular whisky had it not been for my journey to this point. I sit now, and do what I do when I reach interesting points in conversations - I trace back the steps to how I got here and appraise the conversation as a whole. From those first tentative steps into whisky through a sherried highlander, through all my forays into Campbeltown, Islay, Islands and Lowlands, peated and unpeated barley, bourbon, wine and sherry casks. Through the discovery of Ralfy and Aqvavitae, to hearing about Dramface, wringing my hands at the nervous prospect of writing about whisky and then writing an article about whisky, tentatively submitting it with no expectations and being welcomed into the Dramface world. Meeting Dallas Mhor through his editing of my words and the incredible mountain of whisky knowledge he possesses. Sticking my emoji hand up at the opportunity of trying something new and a sample arriving of a whisky selected by an award winning acquaintance of Dallas, operating an award winning whisky shop. The genesis of this Benromach experience was opening myself up to whisky as a concept - putting aside all my historical woes with this elusive spirit and giving it a go. Look at where it’s taken me.
Dallas is departing Dramface to focus on his own journey. I have known him only through the writer's room, the podcasts and through following him on his whisky_rover social media. I don’t know him personally, have never met him IRL and if it wasn’t for the happenstance of Dramface, I might never have heard of him (unlikely). But despite my lack of direct connection, I will miss his presence around the Dramface ramparts. He was the authority that kept us all right and, by extension, showed us that there is more to whisky than the headline dram-de-jours. His views on obscure indies, antique bottles and articles are all locally sourced wood pellets to stoke our collective biomass boilers. But really, I’m just selfishly thinking of all the bangers he might have exposed me to, through the Dramface journey. Thank you, Dallas, for all you have done for Dramface and getting it off the ground in such a sensational style and for all you have done for us Dramfacers, editing our warblings and playing a big part in the existence of Dougie Crystal. This Benromach experience wouldn’t have happened without your involvement, so thank you, one final time. Slàinte Mhaith!
Score: 8/10
Hamish’s Review
Shout out to Dougie who sent me on a sample of this Benromach 11 year old exclusive for Abbey Whisky. You can’t beat a sample share and I'm blown away at times by the sheer generosity of the whisky community. Cheers Dougie! Really looking forward to this one.
Score: 7/10
Very Good Indeed.
TL;DR
To me it’s not your typical Benromach flavour profile but a tasty dram nonetheless
Nose
Subtle and soft on first sniff of this dram. Fresh orchard fruits announce themselves. Bags of juicy fruit sweetness. Some plum and raisins. Hint of spice and an oak dryness. Cold creme brulee with a burnt sugar topping. Some custard cream biscuits and a little trace of oak milt in there too. With the high ABV this doesn’t sting the nostrils, and you can explore this pour in some depth. The back end of the nose has some worn out rubber gloves with some wet moss. Slices of cold processed ham with a sprinkling of rock salt.
Palate
Tobacco. Cigarette smoke, but it tastes like a piece of cigarette rolling paper if you give that a lick and get a taste of the rolled tobacco. Bright on arrival and prickly on the tip of the tongue. Turns bitter, and reminds me of concentrated lemon curd. Fresh ginger and Bramley apple too. When you get past the smoke, it turns into some marmalade on top of toasted brown bread. There’s a bit of butter under that marmalade too. Small taste of oak. Soft cinnamon spice with brown sugar in the mix. Faint memories of Cadbury’s caramel pieces. Soft fudge and candied peel. Wee bit of salinity announcing itself on the back end. The finish rounds off with more smoke and a grassy herbal element. It lingers for quite some time, drying out the back of the tongue and roof of your mouth. You have to go back for another sip!
The Dregs
I love a whisky that’s solely slumbered in a bourbon barrel. With this liquid housed in a first fill bourbon barrel, it makes for a tasty pour! Especially for a Benromach, it keeps it simple and shows the real character of the liquid. I’m delighted to have been sent a sample to try. The ABV isn’t too hot or overwhelming, but mellows out the smoke and gives you a silky sweetness that’s rather quite fresh.
I’m also a big fan of Benromach, having enjoyed their 10 year old, Contrasts: Smoke and Cask strength offerings recently, this 11 year old was a delicious dram. Thanks again to Dougie for sharing this with me, it might be one i’ll have to pick up to enjoy the full bottle. It’s quite an easy sipper, one you can mull over all evening. It’s a good sharing whisky too. It can be as loud or as quiet as you need it to be. Great dram!
Score: 7/10
Tried this? Share your thoughts in the comments below. DC
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