Benromach 9 Year (1978), SMWS 47.1
Whisky: Benromach 9 Year (1978), SMWS 47.1
Country/Region: Scotland/Speyside
ABV: 64.5%
Cask: Oak
Age: 9 Year (Distilled Oct. 1978, Bottled Oct. 1987)
Nose: Fruity and spicy with a touch of spirited heat, strawberry licorice, coffee ground and chicory, wood oil, slightly medicinal, malted cereal grains, earthy undertones with dried mushrooms and decaying wood.
Palate: Medium-bodied, initially soft and oily with earth, wood, and hints of fruit; strawberries and balsamic faded to dried tobacco leaves and birch soda. A touch spirited on the back end and very peppery with a subtle yeasty funk and lingering tobacco.
Finish: Very long and peppery with a gradual fade toward dried herbs and the salty-sweetness of fresh shrimp.
Score: 7-8
Mental Image: Miscellaneous Coffee Tin on a Shrimp Crawler
Narrative & Notes: There are a lot of distilleries in Scotland, and it feels as though there are some I rarely get around to tasting. This review is only my third of a Benromach bottle and, unusually, my second review of one from the 1970s. To be fair, there is very little Benromach from the 1980s and 90s; the distillery was mothballed in 1983 as the Whiskyloch set in and did not reopen until 1998.
Not only was Benromach offline for 15 years, the Speyside distillery is relatively small; the 2022 Malt Whisky Yearbook gives its annual theoretical capacity as 700,000 liters but notes that in 2021 it only planned to produce about 400,000. That may change as owner Gordon and MacPhail, the well-known independent bottler, have expanded warehouse capacity on the campus in recent years.
I found this malt relatively similar to the other Benromach in my admittedly small sample size, especially the woody spice and underlying earthiness. The malt had a few intriguing features; first up, the heat, which should be no surprise considering the high abv., yet the spirited prickle only appeared on the back end when sipping; this was not rocket fuel burning across the palate. Second, the finish was simply phenomenal. I would score that a ten on its own, as I have rarely encountered a finish with such a clear and well-defined transition from intense peppercorn to herbal tobacco to shrimp with a lingering sweet saltiness.
Overall, a unicorn bottle from the early days of SMWS, the first Benromach they bottled, and only one of five they ever bottled. A good friend got the bottle off auction some years ago and, worried that with a metal screw cap the fill level might go down, decided to open it in honor of 2023.
