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History In A Bottle Day 12: BenRiach 1983 KWM Cask 298 29 Year

Posted on December 12, 2022

This post is Bonus Content. It has information on one of the KWM Cask bottles that are featured on the back of our 2022 KWM Whisky Calendar box. You can find the blog post for the mini bottle for Day Twelve of our Whisky Calendar here.

by Andrew

For me, there was likely no more exciting distillery in the first part of my career than BenRiach. I love the story, whether there is any truth to it or not, of Billy going to the pub with some execs from Pernod Ricard, and walking out the owner of a distillery. This is something he has now done 3 times, most recently with GlenAllachie. The acquisition of BenRiach was an interesting one because it came with a decent parcel of casks, and an option to purchase more at a fixed price in the future. Over the decade that followed BenRiach went from an almost unknown distillery to a leader in innovation. It was also for about 5 of those years our best-selling whisky.

We have bottled about 10 KWM exclusive casks of BenRiach over the years, maybe more, it is hard to be completely confident about this. We have transitioned websites 3 times since then, and have migrated to new points of sale systems twice. Suffice it to say, we can’t look back on our 30 years of sales data with 100% confidence.

Of the many BenRiach casks we bottled, three stand out for me. Our first ever BenRiach bottling was a 15-year-old matured in a Madeira Hogshead. It was a gorgeous fruity whisky with loads of decadent spice. Then there was the 18-year-old peated BenRiach distilled in 1994 and finished in virgin oak… it was an unapologetic beast. The third, a 1983 vintage BenRiach, was without question the best, and IMHO one of the top 5 whiskies we have ever bottled. There were a number of excellent 1983 vintage whiskies bottled by BenRiach. It is one of those parcels, like GlenDronach 1972, Bowmore 1964, or Ardbeg 1974 that for whatever reason just happen to have been exceptional.

Matured 29 years in a Hogshead cask, likely refill, the whisky was bottled after 29 years at a cask strength of 44.2%. That low ABV might be part of the recipe for success here. This was a whisky jam-packed with the sort of tropical fruit notes that only time, a tired old cask, and a healthy dose of luck seem to create.