Benrinnes 12yo Cadenhead’s
Cadenhead’s Shop Release 2024 | 56.7% ABV
Score: 5/10
Average. In a Good Way
TL;DR
Not great, but not bad enough to prevent me hoping for better
Even old friends suffer from mood swings
I don’t often go the route of a whisky auction, but when I do I very much enjoy the experience. While most online whisky auctions span a week or thereabouts, the enjoyment I experience is derived from two days of the auction’s span of time.
We start with the first day of the auction. This first day is full of hope, interest, intrigue, and excitement. Roll up your sleeves, grab a dram for inspiration, and be prepared to sit for a while. On those first days of auctions, I find myself going through, at times, thousands of lots looking for the gems in the rough. I spend hours scanning and filtering; and with each successive online page I turn, a little more excitement builds.
I mark interesting bottles as I go, knowing that at least 95% of them will be beyond my budget by the end of the auction: that’s fine, as it’s the 5% that is what it’s all about. The adventure charting my way through the whisky undergrowth and unmapped territory brings, to me, a great deal of satisfaction that yields more than a bit of giddiness and anticipation.
Admittedly, sometimes that hope morphs into fantasy as I say to myself, “Maybe, just maybe, that 1970 Lagavulin will go unnoticed and I’ll be able to snag it for £25…”
And then, there is the lull.
The auction in which I snared my last four bottles ran for eight days from the time it opened until the time it ended. The six days between the excitement of the opening and the closing dragged a bit. Sure, there were check-ins here and there to see how many of the bottles I had tagged as bottles “to watch” had been bid on, such that they were now out of range, but other than those cursory views this interim timeframe was a waiting game. I waited with impatience.
To my experience, these interim days are often the timeframes when bidding for the 35 year old Broras, the 1960 Macallan, and that 50 year old Yamazaki start to heat up from folks with vast swathes of funds at their disposal. For those of us who don’t want to run up prices on their bottles, I constantly hear “hold yer water!” in my head…and I continue to wait.
And then, the final day of the auction comes. On this particular auction, it’s a Sunday. I have cleared a three-hour block before the ending of the auction. While I’m not going to sit and stare at my laptop continually for those three hours, I don’t stray far. At this last auction, when I fired up my laptop at the three-hour mark, I saw that roughly half of my “watched” bottles were now going for well above my self-imposed £40 cap.
I re-scanned the auction’s lots that were under my cap to ensure that there were not others that had escaped my initial vetting. I stepped away for a bit. A nervous and giddy anticipation began to take hold around 7:00pm (the auction closed around 9:00pm), and at 7:20pm I started checking the site every twenty minutes. It was quite interesting to see which bottles became the focus of bidding wars, and which bottles remained under the radar or unappreciated.
My initial “watch” list consisted of 84 bottles. By 8:00pm on the Sunday, the number of bottles that remained under my imposed cap had been whittled down to 17. Fascinating. Enthralling. Nerve-racking. By 8:30pm, the number was down to 6. With some last-minute jockeying, by the time the auction closed, I had won four bottles. Fortuitously – though I thought I might only satisfy two or three of the challenges I had set out for myself – I managed to land a bottle for each of the four challenges I had set out to find. There was a celebration and a happy dance in the Shaw household that night.
The Pot Still birthday bottle Blair Athol from my last review checked the box to have whisky from a distillery I had never previously sampled. This bottle reviewed today checked the second box: welcoming back an old friend.
Benrinnes is a distillery that I adore but haven’t had a bottle of this elixir in the cabinet in quite some time. As I waited for the bottle to come to my door, I was curious to see if this Cadenhead’s bottle could live up to the expectations and memories of Benrinnes drams of the past.
Review
Benrinnes 12yo, Cadenhead’s Shop Release 2024, Bourbon hogshead, 1 of 300 bottles, Distilled 2011, bottled August 2024, 56.7% ABV
USD$53 (£40) paid at auction
Without doubt, Benrinnes remains a favorite distillate.
Their Flora and Fauna (snagged in my trip to Scotland in 2022, and reviewed here) opened my eyes. Despite it being 43% ABV and surely chill filtered, the whisky was really quite nice. Full, hefty, and a joy to have. Since then, I have sampled two other Benrinnes offerings. One was a dram from an independent bottling I sampled at a whisky bar, and the other was also an independent bottling but was shared by a friend. Those wonderful drams did nothing but affirm my love for the distillery.
That said, it has been more than a year since I have had any Benrinnes, and the memories of the richness, depth/meatiness, and dark honey from my Benrinnes memory banks always makes me look longingly at any Benrinnes bottle I come across. As with Blair Athol, it is another relatively small operation under the Diageo umbrella. Though I see Benrinnes expressions from independent bottlers, the magic distillate is largely restricted in smaller doses to us whisky botherers, especially out here.
Going through the auction’s lots, there were a few distilleries that fell into this second search – looking for a favored distillery whisky that has not been in my cabinet in a long time. At the outset of the auction, I also tagged independent bottlings of Clynelish, Highland Park, Glenfarclas, and Bladnoch.
I watched these through the course of the auction, but after a few days only the Clynelish and the Benrinnes remained at/under the £40 mark. Both remained at that auction bid, but in the last hour of the auction, the IB Clynelish bottle caught the eyes of at least two bidders who ran the price up to more than £70 over the course of that last sixty minutes. Thankfully, this particular Benrinnes bottling remained outside of the view or care of serious bidders, and I was tremendously happy to have this land in my lap.
Maybe they knew something I didn’t…
Score: 5/10
Average. In a Good Way
TL;DR
Not great, but not bad enough to prevent me hoping for better
Nose
Prickly lemon pith. Rose water. Sense of petrichor. Stacked, wet firewood logs. Hiking through wet leaves. Key lime pie, but predominant with the meringue. Leather conditioner. Orange blossom honey. Vanilla layer cake.
Palate
Despite the liquid being twelve years old, this whisky brings a spicy prickle with a grip, right off the bat. Lemon curd and a vegetal note that I can’t quite describe. Grapefruit pith. Tapioca pudding. Slightly acidic. The petrichor elements come forward toward the finish, accompanied by a resurgence of the spicy prickle. Not definitively ginger, nor definitively pepper, but somewhere in between. Going back to this over a few drams over a few days, thoughts of new make spirit also creep into my thoughts.
This has the Benrinnes heft and weight, for sure. But the flavors from this ex-bourbon cask maturation whisky do not match the heightened expectations I had for this bottle. It’s not bad, but this is more of a whisky that screams to me that it needs more time in the cask…and preferably a more active cask.
I played with water, as I did with my Blair Athol. And, as with the Blair Athol, the best dilution was around the 48%-50% ABV level. The initial prickle subsided, but the flavors were still a bit sharp and disjointed. The label emphasizes on its flavor wheel “sweet” and “spicy”, and yet my tongue’s flavor wheel shows heightened levels of petrichor and vegetal notes that dominate the spice, lemon, and citrus.
The Dregs
This bottle disappointed me a bit, for sure. It is all elbows and knees. Perhaps the best way to describe this whisky is to say that if it was a woodworking project, I would say that someone forgot to take the time to sand the piece down before applying the stain.
It is a reminder that even the best names on a bottle can have an off-day here and there. In thinking about this, I reflected upon my time with Benrinnes. It occurred to me that the other three Benrinnes expressions I have had all had some sherry influence. The Flora and Fauna has its sherry cask influence. I had a SMWS bottling a few years ago which had a sherry maturation, and the third Benrinnes was, if memory serves, a Signatory which used some form of sherry casks. All three I thought were solidly good-to-exceptional whiskies. Sherry maturation worked so well with the other Benrinnes experiences, and the one in front of me is strictly ex-bourbon. Is that the issue? I don’t think so. Worm tub heft, weight, and character were present in all three prior times drinking a Benrinnes. And, I must say, that I can discern those same characteristics in this Cadenhead’s bottle – even if I have to push through the elbows and knees. No, I don’t believe that Benrinnes can only be good with the addition of a sherry cask maturation. Perhaps the optimist in me, but I can sense and feel the potential in my glass.
I am also mindful that, as with many bottles, it very well may open up with time. I have pushed past the shoulder and beyond the top of the label, and we will see if/how there is any improvement with air in the bottle. That said, this ex-bourbon maturation will not put me off Benrinnes. I have tasted how good this distillery can be, and one odd cask does not change my love for the whisky. Quite honestly, I know I cannot overlook the expectation factor. Certainly, my expectations were high when I saw a 12 year old Benrinnes at cask strength that had not been stripped by chill filtering. Certainly, frustrated expectations add a layer to this whisky malaise.
And yet… I am still glad to have this bottle in the cabinet. Maybe, as said, the bottle will open up. Maybe I will come to appreciate this whisky more over time. Regardless, I am ever-more appreciative of the opportunity to sample and avail myself of single malts. Especially being in the whisky desert, I do not take such things for granted any more. But, even with the appreciation, this is a 5/10 whisky.
The next instalment of the auction haul brings a favorite distillery with a unique (to me) twist.
Fingers crossed it clears the 5/10 ‘Average’ hurdle.
Score: 5/10
Tried this? Share your thoughts in the comments below. OS
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