Benromach Hermitage 2005/2014

The Benromach Hermitage is a wood finish expression bottled at 45%. Distilled in 2005 and bottled in 2014. Matured in 1st fill bourbon casks and finished for 27 months in hand-selected casks from the Hermitage Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée, in the northern Rhône region of France. This expression is a limited release of 4200 bottles.

The nose at first for me has smoky mouldy cheese notes and dried apricots. After a while thick vanilla cream notes appear with some powdered sugar and american pancakes. Bit darker almost leather and tobacco notes in the back. Find the nose a bit difficult to get a full view on it. It does not release a lot of different notes to me.

But on the palate I get a whole different story. Sweet fruit and vanilla notes combined with soft red current, raspberry, honey, black current and strawberry notes. Some fresh mint notes coming through with soft chocolate milk. Orange, lemon, red apple, fudge and gooseberries. The finish is not that long and fresh and sweet and scoring it an 7 out of 10. Mainly due to the troubles I have with the nose on this whisky. It just feels a bit weird to me, don't know what it is... but not very enthusiastic about this one at the moment.