BEN NEVIS SINGLE MALT
Cask No. 13; selected by K&L (2024)MASH BILL – 100% malted barley
PROOF – 113.8
AGE – 10 years 5 months in a first-fill oloroso sherry cask
DISTILLERY – Ben Nevis Distillery (bottled by Signatory Vintage Scotch Whisky Co.)
PRICE – $66
WORTH BUYING? – At this price, and if I didn’t already have other heavily sherried whiskies on hand, maybe.
I debated whether to share notes on this bottle. Over the past year I’ve been experiencing a gradually increasing sense of sherry fatigue—and look how dark the whisky in that bottle is.☝︎
I began to notice this fatigue with a 2024 Edradour Caledonia release, which spent roughly half its 12 years in an ex-bourbon cask and the other half in an ex-oloroso cask. The oloroso made a decisive impact, rendering a luscious cherry-laden sherry bomb of a single malt. I enjoyed it. Yet I found I didn’t reach for it often.
A month prior, I’d cracked a bottle of the Galveston 12 Year, a one-off single malt distilled and bottled by Bodegas Hidalgo la Gitana, a Spanish sherry operation founded in 1792. The Galveston spent its entire 12 years in amontillado sherry casks. In my notes I summed it up simply with “🍷💣❗️”
I was rather taken by it, as well as the novelty of an accomplished single malt coming out of a Spanish sherry bodega. But like the Caledonia that would follow, I didn’t reach for the Galveston often. In fact, I eventually gave it away to a co-worker.
Then came a Hazelburn 8 Year and a Kilkerran 8 Year, both aged entirely in ex-oloroso sherry. Both were 🍷💣❗️experiences, each with their own distinctions. Though my initial response to them was essentially meh, their quality was very evident and they both grew on me in the weeks after I wrote them up here on the blog—much more so than either the Galveston or Caledonia had done.
Still, thinking further back than this past year to other sherry bombs—e.g. the Hakata 18 Year, an Amrut cask strength single cask—they all took me a long time to get through. So it was quite evident to me that an overwhelming sherry influence just isn’t my thing. If a single malt is going to be all about the sherry, why not just buy some sherry?
Balanced with more influence from ex-bourbon casks, which offer a brighter inclination toward vanilla and caramel notes, a less dominating sherry influence can be quite lovely. Exquisite even. I think immediately in this regard of a 2024 cask strength Springbank 12 Year or the standard Laphroaig Sherry Oak release.
But this Ben Nevis is not one of those careful bourbon / sherry vattings. Rather, this bottle is one among 671 taken from a single large oloroso sherry butt, where the whisky spent its full decade resting. I’d cracked it with some reluctance. I was eager to try another Ben Nevis after several years since my last. But I was disappointed it was yet another oloroso cask situation.
At uncorking, sure enough: 🍷💣❗️
Ah well. So why post notes on it?
I figured I could use this bottle to dig into my sherry fatigue, and parse out what about it I find tiring.
So here we are, a week and a half after uncorking and three pours into the bottle. These brief notes were taken using a traditional Glencairn.
COLOR – dark honey amber-oranges with brassy highlights
NOSE – dark and pungent oloroso sherry, a creamy vanilla-caramel drifting behind it, gentle wine and oak tannins
TASTE – the oloroso now allows a dark chocolate fudge sauce note to ease forward where the vanilla-caramel had been; the tannins and a brighter red plum note dance around the edges
FINISH – oloroso now like it’s been browned in a skillet, fleshy ripe red plum, subtle bitterness from the tannins, eventually a subtle coffee note and whiffs of the chocolate sauce
OVERALL – 🍷💣❗️➕ 🍫
My original emoji summation stands. I added the 🍫 more out of generosity, not because it carries equal weight to the sherry. But once the chocolate arrives it does stick around, veering in and out of the coffee note, itself a seeming product of the oloroso and tannins.
I added a dollop of water. The nose now offers stronger tannins, which isn’t an improvement though it’s certainly not ruinous. Like the aromas, the flavors now also seem to have been narrowed down closer around the oloroso and tannins, and the texture is thinner. The finish then has a more notable brightness to the fruit notes, though they come across more like fruit skins than the meat of the fruit.
It’s not at all bad. And playing with different amounts of water might be interesting. But it could be I prefer this whisky at its full, richer strength.
So, it’s not that I don’t like this, nor the other sherry bombs I’ve had. It’s just that even when the quality is solid, there’s not much surprise to be had. The sherry notes are so loud that the other notes aren’t able to add their two cents to the convo.
So I’d say my sherry bomb fatigue comes from an ultimate preference for nuance over one-note experiences. A desire for a balance of complexity and ease, even if it’s a teetering balance. Perhaps especially when it’s a teetering balance. With this Ben Nevis single cask, the personality of the whisky is so centered in the sherry cask there’s little else of significance to discover or to mark it as unique. Just another quality sherry bomb.
In many areas of life, it’s often the case that I find a singularly pronounced personality to be off-putting. People who wear only exceedingly bright flashy outfits. People who flirt heavily by seeming course of habit. People who are always on, their dominant mood—be it rage or enthusiasm—cranked up to eleven. I find them overwhelming. No doubt this is due to my own shyness, modesty, or need for privacy. I don’t have a lot of extra space inside to absorb someone who must by their nature take up a lot of space.
For example—and this will be heresy to some—I never found Robin Williams funny. His unrelenting energy, producing at least as much sweat as it did spontaneous one-liners, always had for me an unnerving air of desperation about it. I fully recognized his talent and skill, and especially admired his evident kindness. But as a comic I found him more exhausting than funny.
I began to find Williams more interesting after meeting him. It was a brief encounter, but intriguing. I was escorting him up an elevator to a speaking engagement with a group of acting students, with whom he’d graciously volunteered to meet. I was shocked by his utterly calm and quiet demeanor. I actually had to lean forward to hear him speak. But the moment he stepped into the theater and stood before the audience of eager students, his trademark sweat, jokes, and shouting all crashed forth like a tsunami. He’d turned on!
After the event, I escorted him back down the elevator. His shirt still drenched with sweat, he commented quietly about the students, with very little movement, his hands in his pockets. The show over, he had turned back off. I remember thinking at the time that something in him needed to switch on and off like that. Some kind of survival mechanism. For me, this didn’t make him funny. It made his on mode somehow tragic.
But the dark and bright aspects of this Ben Nevis don’t aspire to the level of tragedy and comedy. There’s nothing rough to release interest from the whisky’s smoothness. It’s just a solid sherry bomb. Tasty, rich, simple, clear, no mystery to slow you down. A perfectly good pour for a chilly night when I want something to sip that’s rich without demanding I think about it. The richness does mean it’s not a “session dram,” so, like its sherry bomb predecessors on my home shelf, this Ben Nevis too shall likely be around for some time to come. Or maybe I’ll gift it to someone.
And that’s okay. At least I now know I don’t need to buy more 100% first-fill sherry cask whiskies anymore.
Cheers!
The Right Spirit 