Ben-ri-ack / Speyside / Scotland
Founded / 1898
Current owners / Brown-Forman
Production capacity / 2.8 million litres per year.
Traditional floor malting / Yes.
Mash tun / 5.8 ton traditional cast iron.
Washbacks / 8x stainless steel.
Stills / 2x wash and 2x spirit.
Website / www.benriachdistillery.com
When John Duff built the Benriach distillery in the late 1890s as the sister to Longmorn, it was not known as such. Unimaginatively named Longmorn 2, the distillery’s time was shortlived – it started production in 1898 but closed in 1900, one of many distilleries that suffered as part of the post-Pattison Crash slump. It did not reopen until the mid-1960s and only then did it become known as Benriach, named after a local hill.
Located two miles south of the city of Elgin it sits across a field from its sibling. For much of the pair’s history they were joined by a railway that carried barley, barrels and malt whisky between the two. During Benriach’s six and a half decade closure, Longmorn remained in production. However, the malting floor and warehouses at Benriach were still being used by Longmorn and that is what kept the buildings from being demolished. The floor malting and kiln are original but much of the production area was completely rebuilt, along with some additional warehousing.
Upon re-opening Benriach quickly became a centre of experimentation, both in spririt production and cask maturation. The early 1970s saw the first foray in to the limited production of peated Speyside malt for the owners’ blending purposes – the decision was made switch two of their distilleries to do this for a short period each year (Caperdonich was the other), so as to not buy peated whisky from competitors. The practice has been maintained every year since and remains to this day. It means that Benriach has the oldest stocks of peated Speyside malt in existence.
Triple distilled spirit then joined in the mid-1990s, although the production of this has been much more sporadic and in much smaller quantities than the peated spirit. This currently runs at about 15,000 litres per year. Benriach has also long been sourcing casks from origins other than America and Spain, and is now well known for this practice. Again, since the 1970s barrels from different red wine, rum, fortified and dessert wines producers including Madeira, Marsala, Port, Sauternes and Tokaji have been used to mature the spirit.
