Ben Nevis 23 Years Old WhiskyNerds Cask 954 46.1% 1996

Professional reviews

Serge Valentin (91)

Who the h**l drank the remainder of the cask? Colour: pale white wine. Nose: well, soot lemon sourdough chalk passion fruit croissants concrete linseed oil sauvignon blanc white asparagus banana skin beeswax shoe polish earth leaven… Please catch your breath! Mouth: wham, this one's got everything. Amazing purity, fruit peeling, maracuja, lemon, chalk, porridge, a wee spoonful of mascarpone, paraffin, salt, bananas… yadda yadda yadda. Textbook untouched Ben Nevis. Finish: rather long, on salt and lemon. This feeling of readymade margarita that I always tend to enjoy. Seawater. The aftertaste is a little medicinal (cough syrup). Comments: this one befriended the eagles (not the band). Pure and perfect.

Words of Whisky (90)

:

Nose: One for the purists. This is about the spirit, not the cask. A hint of banana peel, some soft lemon yoghurt, tinned pineapple and a creamy waxiness. It has a faint mineral quality too. Finally a tinge of sweet barley water.
Taste: Super waxy and creamy and pretty concentrated. There are bright yellow and green fruits, but also ginger and cracked peppercorns. Soft minerals and just a pinch of salt too. This is what happens when you don’t upset good spirit with overzealous wood.
Finish: The fruit returns after a little while, while the waxiness is the gift that keeps on giving.

Score: 90

Another winning pick by the WhiskyNerds. Now I wonder what happened to the rest of the cask?

Whiskynotes.be:

Every decent bottler should have a Ben Nevis these days, preferably one of these 1995 or 1996 casks. The Dutch guys who call themselves WhiskyNerds have just released a Ben Nevis 1996. Expectations are high.



Ben Nevis 23 yo 1996 (46,1%, WhiskyNerds 2020, bourbon hogshead #954, 75 btl.)
Nose: boring, just excellent. There’s lemongrass, unripe bananas, hints of ginger and pineapple cake. Sunflower oil and paraffin. Fresh lime. One of the more vertical, chalky examples, with a great fruity side as well.

Mouth: this unique mix of bright, lightly tropical fruits and mineral notes. Albariño. Heather and chalk, pears, hints of grapefruit and one (shy) passion fruit. Candle wax. Wet pebblestones, a whiff of menthol and some earthy touches. This has a slight austerity (Springbank-style at times), less creamy and perhaps even less fruity than some of the sister casks.

Finish: long, mineral, with big waxy notes and some wet leaves.

Quite excellent again, even though it’s slightly more narrow than the best casks in my book. Not that it matters much: with just 75 bottles, you should have made a reservation long ago (or won one of the ballots). But where’s the rest of this cask?

BOW (91)

Malt Fascination.com:

Sniff:
It’s quite spirit driven, but the cask has added notes of straw and white oak. It’s quite dry, but has notes of dried apple peels, apple cores and grape twigs. There are quite some hints of things visible around the distillery: moss, slate, heather. After a while it gets slightly sweeter (but still, this is not a sweet whisky) with hints of white grapes, and some floral notes.

Sip:
The palate is, not unexpected, very gentle. Some tingling hints of black pepper, but further there’s oak and heather. Apples, pears, grapes, and straw. The floral notes and the minerals are more subdued here. After a while the black pepper starts building a bit more. A whiff of mint and star fruit when I let it sit for a few minutes.

Swallow:
The finish is a bit more fruity and a bit richer. More hints of oak and straw, with dried apple and heather again. I am getting moss and dried flowers too. Apples, unripe pears, fresh leaves.

It’s a very different whisky to what I was expecting. Much more gentle, and more ‘Fort William’-like, and not as fruity as I would have guessed. That is absolutely not a bad thing, since it is a very classical whisky with lots of gentle, old fashioned flavors.

It is absolutely a winner, but one to start a night with, instead of one to end it with. The spirit is king in this whisky and after a few other drams I would guess this is too gentle to stand-up, or at least it doesn’t shine to its fullest.

An awesome pick, and I’ll gladly go through more of this, with my part of the bottle-share!