BACK in
June, Serge Reijnders, a Belgian BenRiach enthusiast, hosted a unique tasting to
sample nineteen BenRiach 1976 Single Cask expressions in one afternoon…and he
sold out all forty places in just two days!
Collectors
normally collect simply to collect - but Serge had different ideas. Such is his
passion for BenRiach, he wanted to share as many of his beloved 1976 expressions
as he could with his invited guests.
As 1976 is
his favourite BenRiach year, you’d be forgiven for thinking it’s also the year
he was born. It’s not – he was born in 1978 but justifies his choice by pointing
out there weren’t that many outstanding Benriachs from that year!
So where
did his obsession for 1976 BenRiachs come from?
Known in
the Low Countries as “that
guy with all the BenRiachs”, he explained: “Bert Dexters got me started. His
enthusiasm was contagious - his explanations about whisky and his insistence on
writing down all the tasting notes. I was immediately sold so I joined “Cask
Six”, Bert’s whisky club, and my first tasting was a few weeks later at a whisky
festival where, as instructed, I noted everything we
tasted.”
Serge
prefers mainly fruity and sherry-matured whisky. “It took me some time to
appreciate peated whisky – although I have always enjoyed whisky with only a
hint of peat where the fruit or sherry comes through.”
As with
many people, his love of BenRiach was started by the company’s Chief Executive
and Master Blender Billy Walker and Serge tasted his first BenRiach at a
Lindores tasting.
Serge takes
up the story. “Then Bert Bruyneel arranged a tasting and we tasted 11 different
BenRiachs including my first 1976 which was specially bottled for the
Craigellachie Hotel, the first-ever 1976 bottling. I just adored it – that
evening I lost my heart to BenRiach!”
Soon Serge
started searching for all the 1976s that had been bottled…and once he had got
them all, he found he couldn’t stop.
“I just had
to get every new 1976 that was released, wherever that might be. Through Magnus
Fagerstrom, currently the biggest BenRiach collector worldwide, I was introduced
to his Japanese contact which helped a lot because soon afterwards the first
1976s for Japan were released.
“Magnus
also put me in touch with his contact in Taiwan which allowed me
to buy two bottles of cask 3033. I took one of them to last year’s Lindores
Whiskyfest where everyone had to take and introduce one bottle. Someone else had
cask 3557 which was specially bottled for La Maison du Whisky and another had
the 1976 for Aston Morris with him. We tasted them and everyone liked the La
Maison du Whisky bottling the most.”
It was that
day which gave Serge the idea of doing his 1976
mega-tasting.
“Originally
I thought I’d keep them for my fortieth birthday in 2018 but every time I told
people about my tasting plans, they'd invite themselves over to my house! That’s
when I thought: if people are so interested in attending, why not put all the
whiskies in a huge tasting, and that’s what happened.”
The tasting
was presented by Jurgen Vromas and cost
€200 per
person. The 19 whiskies were tasted in 4 groups, 3 consisting of 5 whiskies and
at the end a blind tasting of 4 whiskies. The whiskies were grouped according to
reputation which meant that the tasting would only get better as the day
progressed.
Group 1
involved three peated whiskies and two sister casks bottled by Signatory.
Journalist Johan van Samang from Whiskypassion magazine
also attended the tasting and noted: “They were enjoyable but not exceptional
whiskies - although we could taste the amazing character of BenRiach coming
through.
“In Group
2, we tasted cask 2013 which hasn’t been bottled yet, but we could compare it
with the 2014. Cask 2014 won, and also won this group.”
In Group 3,
they tasted three 1976s bottled for Asia and two for
Europe. In
this category, the Shinanoya bottling stood out for
everyone.
And
finally, group 4 was the best of the best, blind tasted:
Johan said:
“Cask 3557 from La Maison du Whisky was expected to win, but amazingly it didn’t
even make it into the top three. Gold was won by cask 3033 for Taiwan, silver for 3029
for Shinanoya and bronze for 3032 for Japan, so Asia won convincingly
from Europe.
“But what
3557 and 3033 have in common is that they are really complex, more so than the
others. They go deeper, they have more layers and above all they have what makes
BenRiach 1976 so special - that fantastic taste of tropical
fruit.”
He
concluded: “This was probably one of the hardest tastings I have ever done, but
it’s also one of the most interesting and definitely the most
enjoyable.
“This kind
of tasting won’t be repeated very often so our thanks go to Serge for his
incredible drive and passion. It’s clear the passion of the few has benefited
the many BenRiach enthusiasts in the Low
Countries!”
(This feature is based
on an article which first appeared in the Dutch Whiskypassion
magazine.)
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