Big BenRiach tasting April 18, 2009 A very special event took place on April 18, 2009. That was the day that I hosted a big BenRiach tasting with 21 different single cask bottlings of BenRiach. As with every event there is a story behind it and this is the story. I began my BenRiach collecting in August 2007. I searched the Internet for information about which bottlings were out there. I looked at different webstores, auctions, Malt Maniacs and of course the official BenRiach website. I early came in contact with Alistair Walker at BenRiach and he sent me some lists over special bottlings. Another early contact was with fellow BenRiach collector Bert Bruynell in Belgium. I bought whatever I could find and afford and Bert was kind enough to sell some of his doubles to me that were sold out in the shops. In May 2008 i had gotten almost all the official bottlings but I missed 4. Bert had them all and he had looked around for them for me but couldn't find them. I asked him if I could buy his, and I knew that he would say no, as he had a complete collection at that point. He said no of course bu the said that I could buy them all if I wanted. It was 80 bottles in total so I had to ask for a price. His price was reasonable so I went to my friend who is a bankir and said I needed a loan. "What for?", he said. "To buy whisky", was my answer. A few days later the loan was done and I could transfer the money to Bert. At the end of October I went down to Belgium to pick up all the bottles. It was of course a fantastic day at Bert's house and we had some wonderful whiskies together. When I came home I stood there with 73 doubles. What should I do with all these bottles. I couldn't drink them myself, so the best thing to do was to arrange a big tasting. What is better than sharing a whiskyexperience with friends? Said and done, a tasting it is. I didn't want it to be just another tasting with 6 different whiskies. No this one had to be something very special. A full day tasting with 3 flights and 7 whiskies in each flight was what I decided to go for. The next decision was very easy to take too. It should be all single casks! One flight with the 70's another with the 80's and last the 90's. As there is some single casks with whisky from the 60's too I took in he oldest one (1966) and put that one with the six 70's bottles. Invitations went out and pretty quickly the tasting was fully booked and now we just had to wait until April. I invited BenRiach to come to the tasting and Alistair promised me that someone would come. Alistair himself couldn't come so the lucky one who had to travel to Sweden and drink 21 single casks of BenRiach was Distillery Manager Alan McConnochie. While we all waited for the months to pass I came up with another idea for the tasting. I really wanted it to be very special so I talked to a friend of mine about putting up shelves at the tasting room and exhibit all my BenRiach bottles. As he works with storage he was the right man for the job. He got the shelves and together with two other friends we set up the tasting rooms with shelves covering one wall. We went to Shurgard to pick up the collection (yes I know it's a shame to have them stored like that, but I don't have the space to keep them at my home and they are also safer there). We unpacked all the 181 different bottles and put them up one shelves. The sight was fantastic! You can see for your selves on the pictures here on the webiste, and I do beleive that you agree with me. The tasting itself was a very nice day. We started at 2 PM and ended it all around 10 PM. The first two hours was the 60' and 70's flight, then one hour of foodbreak, then another two hours with the 80's, another hour of food and at last two hours with the 90's. All the whiskies we tasted including my tastenotes and scores are listed below. There were some good one, some excellent ones and one that I still can't beleive who authorized to bottle. Billy Walker must have been sick when he decided to bottle that one. This wasn't the first big tasting I arranged and it was definately not the last one either. I hope to do another big BenRiach tasting again in the future and then we do it all again, but that time there will be more than 181 BenRiach bottles on the shelves. More photos from this special day can be found at this page.

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