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The nose on this one was immediately impactful and brand spectrum, with notes including raspberry jam, a fat, rum-like worm tub funk, powdered cinnamon and ginger, and also clove-studded baked apples. We also found treacle, crushed hazelnuts and malt extract. Water brought more rum notes, pine sap, toffee sauce and dusty coal scuttles. There was a scattering of dried exotic fruits in the background too. The palate opened with rich and emphatic notes of hessian, orange muscat wines, fennel seed and salted liquorice. Reduction added dried marjoram, aged calvados, pickled walnuts and sweet rancio notes, while we found soft spices and dark fruits in the aftertaste. After 13 years of aging, we combined the contents of two bourbon hogsheads into this top quality first fill sherry butt.
About Balmenach
The fermentation is long, the stills relatively small and run quickly, and the vapour runs into worm tubs, rather than shell and tube condensers. This helps to produce a slow-maturing new make character which is rich and meaty, ideal for adding weight and grunt to blends, and also to be a good match with ex-Sherry casks.
Inver House has no plans to release this highly distinctive whisky as a single malt. The reason for this is that the make – whose style is unusual these days – is too highly-prized as fillings for blends, both by Inver House and other firms.
This is an old distillery. James MacGregor took out his licence in 1824 on what was a farm after a period of illicit production. According to Robert Bruce Lockhart, this took place soon after MacGregor had received a visit from a local gauger. When asked what a specific farm building contained, he said it was simply a peat shed. “Well, I suggest you take out a licence for it,” replied the gauger. Bruce Lockhart was related to the MacGregors and his highly recommended book, Scotch, contains many fascinating details about old-style distillation as practised in Cromdale.
The distillery eventually passed into the hands of Scotch Malt Distillers, DCL’s malt production arm, which expanded the plant to include a Saladin maltings. It was briefly mothballed between 1993 and 1997, when it was sold to current owner, Inver House, which also produces Caorunn Gin here.