Benriach Distillery: 10 Facts

Benriach Distillery. 🥃 This unique Speyside gem of a distillery produces whisky in a VERY different way to most others. Here are 10 facts.

Region: Speyside

Founded: By John Duff, in 1898

Current owner: Brown-Forman

Range: ⩥

There are 16 whiskies in the range, eight of which are from the core range, which include: The Original Ten, The Smoky Ten, The Twelve, The Smoky Twelve, The Sixteen, The Twenty-One, The Twenty-Five and The Thirty.

Triple Distillation ③

Once a year, Benriach run a batch of TRIPLE DISTILLED whisky, which is extremely rare for a Scotch whisky distillery and normally only seen in Ireland. The batch produces a particularly smooth whisky with an orchard fruit character.

Peat 🪨

The autumn is ‘Smoke Season’ at Benriach, where the distillery produces only PEATED WHISKY.

The malt is dried with Highland peat in a process that produces whisky with a particularly sweet smoky character - used in The Smoky Ten and The Smoky Twelve. Highland peat is very different to the slightly medicinal smokiness that you tend to find in Islay peated whiskies.

Interestingly, Benriach holds the oldest and rarest peated whisky inventory in Scotland, with casks dating back to the 1970s.

Floor Malting 🔥

Benriach is one of only 8 distilleries in Scotland that still malt their own whisky. They do this for around a month every year, malting small batches of barley and turning it by hand.

Four Water Mash 💧

Benriach draws its water supply not from the River Spey but from an underground reservoir on the estate.

During the mashing stage Benriach use FOUR batches of mineral rich water instead of the industry standard of three. The reason for this is to draw the sweetness of the barley out to help create their signature orchard fruit style. 🍐

Female Master Blender 👩🏻‍🦱

Aberdeen native Dr. Rachel Barrie became the U. K.’s first female master blender in 2003 and joined Brown-Forman in 2017 where she went straight into the daunting task of overhauling the core range.

She is responsible for handling whisky creation across Brown-Forman’s three Scotch whisky distilleries – Benriach, GlenDronach and Glenglassaugh – which includes nosing the whisky and writing tasting notes, managing Benriach’s existing eclectic collection of oak casks, and sourcing new and interesting casks from around the world.

Fun Fact: The name Benriach roughly translates as ‘speckled mountain’. ⛰️

Have you ever tried a Benriach? Have you been to visit the distillery? Let me know in the comments.

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