Benromach Organic

Today, this truly unique distillery is run as if in a time warp, where a team of three carefully craft a pre-60s style of Scotch whisky with the minimal use of modern tools. The distillery’s small scale means that everything can be done by hand, and they joke that the only computer in the distillery is one used for emails, so much so that there are no temperature or pressure gauges on the stills. Everything is down to the stillman’s skills. The old-time processes mean slower fermentations using a combination of brewer’s and distiller’s yeast for bigger, maltier flavours, slower distillations to capture the sweetest part of the run, and a focus on local ingredients. Benromach only uses barley grown in their home county of Morayshire and spring water from the nearby Romach Hills. Only first fill casks are used for maturation and all the sherry casks have spent at least three years in a Spanish bodega before being shipped to the UK for bottling and consumption, meaning that the sherry was actually used as drinking sherry (therefore of a higher quality) and not simply dumped after seasoning the cask for whisky maturation.

Other than it’s few heavily peated varieties, the bulk of Benromach whiskies are slightly peated to 12ppm and the malting is done locally by Crisp Maltings. This is key to Benromach’s pre-1960s style because all Scotch whisky was at least very lightly peat-smoked in that era as peat was a staple fuel. This changed in recent times as peat and even coal to a large extent have been replaced by electricity and gas, paving the way for the non-peated whiskies now available on the market.

Launched in 2006, Benromach Organic was the first certified organic single malt whisky. Making organic whisky isn’t easy because it requires compliance with the UK Soil Association’s rigorous standards but, fortunately for us, the team at Benromach were up to the task and we’re all the better for it today! Firstly the team had to source biological barley grown without the use of any chemical fertilizers, pesticides or other artificial chemicals. Secondly every element that touched the spirit had to be certified organic too — from the raw materials, right down to the style of cask. This requirement ruled out the use of ex-Sherry or ex-Bourbon casks, so Benromach sourced organic American Oak from environmentally managed Missouri forests and in so doing also became the first single malt to successfully mature in virgin oak casks, so much so that Jim Murray, everyone’s favourite whisky nut, gave it two thumbs up with 91/100.