“When shall we three meet again?” Let’s just forget about the thunder, lightening and the rain. Were those three hags, witches or ugly sisters at the start of the Scottish Play - or should I say the Scotch Play for the purpose of this whisky blog? Mind on, not that I am saying the three Whisky Women who are central to this piece are at all hag-like. The point is - alleluia, we are getting there - Cawdor Castle (and Macbeth was Thane of Cawdor: click the link and note the blue, blue sky) is but thirty miles from the BenRiach Distillery The BenRiach Smoke Season is the reason that I am writing this piece. Phew.
Whisky Woman Ghillie Basan introduced me to the BenRiach Smoke Season: she brought me a bottle on a visit to Orkney when researching her next cookbook about Scottish seafood. She is an extraordinary woman and Spirit & Spice, her food and whisky book, is one of those books that I wish I had written and not her - except I don’t know as much as her so it would have been a much slimmer volume. Spirit & Spice is now Ghillie’s whisky experiences website. If you are planning to visit Scotland with one of your main reasons being distillery tours, you need to try to book onto a Whisky Safari with this lady. She, like me, is one of Scotland’s 24 Food Tourism Ambassadors, her area being Moray. That puts her in charge of Speyside as far as I am concerned. That’s more distilleries than my Highland Park and Scapa here on Orkney. I’m prepared to share and she is too - hence she brought me the BenRiach Smoke Series.
There’s not a lot of point in me just copying a load of info from BenRiach’s own website to make myself sound knowledgeable about this distillery - it’s all there for you to read yourself and I have yet to visit, although I will do. What I have found from my two go-to whisky books - and writing this has made me realise that both are somewhat out of date - is that the floor maltings at BenRiach are such an important part of their history. They were often kept working to supply malt to the nearby Longmorn distillery with a railway between the two to transport the malt, even when BenRiach itself was not producing spirit. Railways - we don’t have any on Orkney: but there is still a small floor malting at Highland Park, where the steeped barley is set to dry, being turned regularly by hand. This is the Highland Park malting floor below.
The other thing that commentators mention is why is there a capital R in the middle of BenRiach? Presumably a nearby mountain? Another question for my visit…
So we need our third Whisky Woman and that is Dr Rachel Barrie, the Master Blender who created The Smoke Season. A legend for her work at Morrison Bowmore - think Bowmore (obviously), Auchentoshan and Glen Garioch - and before that at Glenmorangie, Rachel Barrie had lots to bring to the BenRiach stable when she joined them in 2017. With GlenDronach as part of the same group there has been some discussion in the whisky world about the profile of the new GlenDronach 15yo, The Revival, under Dr Barry. That’s as maybe, but her work at BenRiach has certainly made it one of my distilleries to explore for this year. And Smoke Season is a triumph.
Here’s my review on YouTube.
What has utterly intrigued me about Smoke Season is how the spirit changes in different glasses. The Glencairn glass, the one on the right above, has become the tasting standard - for us drinkers if not in the Blending Room - since being introduced a decade or more ago. The tulip shaped top echos the traditional copita, funnelling the aromas from the glass and intensifying them - it seems to me - into the nosing experience that we whisky drinkers enjoy. If you are a swirler there’s room for that as well. I found the Smoke Season too much when I first tasted it in the Glencairn as you will hear in my YouTube but right now it’s how I want to drink it.
To the left of the bottle is a tasting glass from Norlan, developed with Master Distiller Jim McEwan, part of the Islay whisky elite. This ‘glass’ has fins or buttresses inside it which to a certain extent homogenise or smooth out a whisky, both on the nose and palate. It certainly changes the Smoke Season and makes it more accessible as I would consider it a complex whisky, one that needs to be made friends with. But it’s a lasting friendship, once you get going. With the optimism of spring - even though it is still so cold here in Orkney - I’m thinking this might be a glass for the Smoke Season on warmer days. Finally, the fish bowl glass on the far left was a freebie with a bottle of Benromach 10yo, another delicious peaty dram but without the gravitas of this BenRiach. For me, at this tasting, this glass stole the specialness from the Smoke Season. It was still very enjoyable, but it lost its chewability, the need and desire to linger over it.
So there you have it. A special whisky created by a Whisky Woman, chosen and given by a Whisky Woman and very much enjoyed by a Whisky Woman.
I assure you that men love this dram too. Whisky is for everyone.