Cast your net wider when choosing smoky whiskies
For many casual drinkers, “smoky whiskies” are synonymous with Islay, the Inner Hebridean home of fire-wreathed sea monsters like Ardbeg, Laphroaig, and Lagavulin. But cast your net wider and you can find spectacular smoky whiskies all over Scotland, and a notable new addition is Smoke Season, the most heavily peated single malt ever to be released by Speyside distillery Benriach.
Benriach produces three styles of whisky; classic, triple-distilled, and – for five decades now – peated single malts, which had been popular in Speyside in Victorian times, but had then sadly fallen out of favour, before their current revival.
Smoke Season is a double cask matured, small batch release intended to celebrate the time of year when the distillery’s production switches over to peated spirits. On the nose there is smoke and hints of burnt caramel, but the initial taste is sweet orchard fruits, and a hit of vanilla and pepper that comes from a combination of first-fill ex-bourbon casks and virgin American white oak. As the sweet creaminess of sultana-stuffed baked apples and custard tapers into a more vegetal, almost cucumbery finish, the smoke that was present on the nose re-emerges to envelop everything. Vibrant flavours do a lot to conceal the potency of the whisky, which is bottled at 52.8% ABV.
For those who are accustomed to Islay smoke, Benriach offers something very different. If an archetypal Islay peated whisky evokes dark skies and spume-flung seas, Benriach’s conjure up a bonfire in an orchard, consuming the red-gold leaves of autumn. A major reason for the distinction is that Islay whiskies primarily use peat sourced near the sea, which is packed with the iodine flavour of seaweed, while the peat used by Benriach comes from the Highlands, and derives from ancient woodlands and heather. The different origins of the peat translate into vastly different characteristics in the finished whiskies.
The woodiness of Highland peat imparts an almost barbecued quality to Smoke Season, and may offer a way into more heavily peated whiskies for people who are not perturbed by the flavour of smoke, but flinch from some of the more maritime or coal gas notes you might find on Islay.
Master blender Rachel Barrie says, “At Benriach we’re always looking to push the boundaries of what is possible in Speyside single malt. With intensely peated spirit batch distilled every year, we never stop exploring how the fruit and smoke aromatics intertwine and mature in a range of eclectic oak casks, either amplifying or transforming the perception of peat.”
If pushing boundaries was her objective, then Smoke Season is a great success.
You can buy Benriach Smoke Season here.