The BenRiach Heart of Speyside

Tasting notes:
The BenRiach was branching out with this one. This “no age statement” is pleading to be used in lieu of Ivory soap or maybe windshield wiper fluid. One cowboy wondered if rubbing it on his lasso might help it slip over the neck of a dogie. A washerwoman thought that if she sprinkled it on her clothesline, the pegged clothes would, under the impetus of gusts of wind, merrily pinwheel about, rather than flap in a plebeian manner. Use it to clean a new walnut dashboard? Of course. Produce a lovely sheen on bonsai lemons to be used as a sidepiece at an ikebana show? Naturally.

Scented soap on the peak of a pyramid’s incursion onto your tongue, spreading out linearly—yet explosively on the pH (peat Hot!) scale, going all pink-tongued. As a result of drinking this, I’m hardly capable of playing the pan pipes made from reeds and cat-o-nine tails that I affect in the Malt Cave, and instead crave the cooling sensation of a mallow-burger from an Australian vegan bakery. (I’m trying to visualize Homer Simpson saying, “Mmmmm. Mallow-burgers,” while drooling, but my imagination doesn’t extend that far.)

There’s a feral perfume coating the roof of my mouth that burns off before reaching the uvula. An exaltation of thick toasted slabs of white bread carved with a carbon steel serrated knife, corners dunked in a small ceramic jar of Hungarian cherry pepper jelly overlaying roast filbert cream.

 

Rating:

On the scale of slow burns escalating into major flare-ups–
The BenRiach “Heartburn of Speyside” is Joe Pesci in Goodfellas. A good guy—a funny guy, but not that kind of funny guy…what kind of funny guy?…just a funny guy!…nothing more meant by that!—who inflames like Mt. Etna without actually erupting. Okay, maybe Joe Pesci does erupt, but the BenRiach lets you feel the magma while only smoldering.

 
 
 
                                                                      –Bill