Benromach Contrasts: Cara Gold Malt
Speyside-based Benromach Distillery has just announced the release of a new limited edition of its whisky as part of its Contrasts series.
Benromach Contrasts: Cara Gold Malt (46% vol.) is a whisky distilled in 2010, using an unusual barley malt for its production. We're talking about roasted caramel malt, far more commonly used in brewing than in the distilling industry. Such malt is responsible for the fruity and toffee accents in the finished product. In the case of Benromach, it was blended at the mashing stage with the distillery's more typical, lightly peated barley malt (12 ppm). The aim of this combination was to create a combination of fruity and toffee notes with a slight smoky note.
The distillate created from the mash thus made went into first-fill bourbon barrels and aged in them until 2022. Bottled in its natural form - no caramel coloring and no cold filtration - it went into 6,000 bottles, of which 1,500 were destined for the UK market. The price of a single bottle of this whisky is £49.99.
Benromach Contrasts: Cara Gold Malt is a beverage that offers aroma notes of lychee, lime and passion fruit combined with a touch of malt cookie. On the palate, we can expect notes of pineapple, apricot, mild pepperiness, roasted malt and kajmak, with a sweet, smoky and fruity finish. This, in any case, is the tasting note of the new whisky, prepared by the producer.
Cara Gold Malt is another whisky in a series of limited editions with a common name Contrasts. To date, editions have been released Organic, matured in fresh American oak barrels, Peat Smoke, prepared with malt smoked to 42 ppm and matured in first-fill bourbon barrels, and Peat Smoke Sherry Cask Matured, prepared with malt smoked to 55 ppm and matured in first-fill sherry casks. All whiskies in the Contrasts series are bottled unfiltered cold, with no added caramel, diluted to a strength of 46% vol. None of them have age declarations, although the vintage from which the distillate is sourced is given for each of them. Simple calculations indicate that the series has whiskeys aged between 9 and 12 years old.
Benromach is a distillery founded in 1898, riding the wave of the Scotch whisky boom of the late 19th century. Production did not begin until 1900, but later that year it was halted due to the crisis in the distilling industry, caused by m.in. activities of the Pattison brothers. Whisky production restarted in 1907, but stopped as early as 1910. And so on. In its more than 100-year history, Benromach has been more often out of work than in whisky production. The last crisis hit the distillery - like many others owned by United Distillers - in 1983. Benromach was closed for more than 10 years, during which it served as a sort of source of interchangeable parts for other distilleries included in the Diageo portfolio. In 1993, the distillery's buildings were bought by one of the oldest and best-known independent distributors, Elgin-based Gordon & MacPhail. It took a full five years to restart the distillery, and it came almost exactly 100 years after its founding. The new owner decided to produce old-style Speyside whisky here, fruity, slightly peaty. Since then, no small number of different editions have been released, a new core offering has been introduced, and a new label design and a new bottle design were proposed in 2020.
Benromach products can be found in permanent offer of the House of Whisky Online - Both those bottled currently and older editions, as well as those from the offer of independent distributors. We encourage you to look between our shelves.
[09.02.2022 / Photo: Benromach]