In the mash, we mix the grist with water drawn from the same source used by Benromach for 120 years. Our pure soft water rises in the Chapelton Spring in the Romach Hills, just a couple of miles behind the distillery. Three waters of increasing temperature extract the flavour and goodness from the malted barley and start the process of converting the starch in the grains into sugar. A couple of turns of the gear in the mash tun leads to cloudy wort for character – complex and malty.

Our long fermentation process lasts between three and five days and takes place in our larch washbacks. Unusually, we use two types of yeast; brewer’s and distiller’s yeast, which gives a more complete fermentation - this all contributes to the development of more complex flavours.

Double distillation through two bespoke copper pot stills creates a medium bodied spirit suitable for variable lengths of maturation. The wash still is settled by hand, using the expertise and experience of our distillers and a traditional water test used to gauge purity. The skill of our dedicated distillers is especially critical when it comes to cutting the spirit, the moment when they consider the new spirit to be of the highest quality. This ‘sweet heart’ of the run goes to spend years maturing in our first-fill casks.

Good casks are crucial for creating good whisky, and most of the flavour and character comes from using oak casks for the first time after their initial use for bourbon or sherry making. These first-fill casks are used exclusively at Benromach and this plays a crucial role in the development of our mellow and sweet flavours. We keep tight control of the whole maturation process so that the wood holding our spirit lends just the right characteristics to our whisky. After hand-filling a cask with fresh Benromach spirit, we roll it to one of our traditional dunnage style warehouses. Storage in dunnage warehouses ensures consistent temperatures and the ideal conditions for maturing single malt whisky.