The Benromach 10

30 ml smiling Cheshire mini

Tasting notes:
This dram opens with the smell of a chocolate mouse in a barn. A marzipan barn. Filled with grass that’s been cut to look just like the green plastic grass from an Easter basket. There’s also a note of particle board made from old growth cedar that once held rare owls. And snail darters swam in its shade. And the people who cut it down were rolling coal at the time.  (OK, last bit is just to complete the humorous picture, it’s not meant to describe an aroma in this whisky–though thankfully we haven’t experienced the smells that dubious activity produces). Finally, the nose offers lovely low notes, like those of a caramel soap for a horse–or even a caramel horse for a soap. Mmm…

     On the mouth, it’s somewhere between brilliant and just short of it, depending on which of us you ask. Imagine a wood lathe operated by a potter’s wheel in an attempt to produce an earthy and woody but nonetheless attenuated Rube Goldberg contraption (that you then decide to name after Rube’s less famous and uselessly silly younger brother, Gube). Is there peat in there? If so, it’s like chewing on a velvet robe with peat lapels that’s sewn together with kangaroo leather. Everything’s better together with kangaroo leather. But there are also notes of furniture polish lacquering a balloon and weighing it down so that it gets hit with high-end, all-natural floor cleaner as the (brand new) mop passes by. To say this much, of course, is not to do the mouth justice. In other words, it’s much better than some of this may sound.

the old branding

     The finish is like sitting in a chair woven from cotton candy and grass under which someone has left a peat cigarette lit. Damn hipsters. But this is one helluva chair.  There’s also the dust of peanuts–or, if you prefer, the dust of Peanuts, which is to say, Pigpen’s unfortunately omnipresent aura–but think of the character’s charm, not his dirt. The finish fades like the Cheshire Cat, leaving only the mouth–and a smile on the face.


Rating:

–On the scale of Rube Goldberg’s lesser known siblings–
The Benromach 10 is Lube Goldberg–Unlike the uselessly silly Gube and the circuitous Rube, Lube always greased the wheels to get stuff done.
benromach-10-year-old

the new branding


   

                                                                 –Stephen
    
    
     

–Our thanks to Chris Riesbeck and Benromach for the sample!

 

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