The rare Saturday story

James Thompson* emailed me this morning to tell me about an article in today's Times (UK) which, on its surface, discusses the Ladybank distillery, but strayed to touch on issues of terroir - this time regarding water and its impact on the finished spirit.

Now before anyone jumps on me for the term terroir and how it is not applicable to the production of Scotch whisky - I'm still looking for someone to come up with a Gaelic term that means "the place where a thing is made" I'll happily start using that term.

Back to business...

The article discusses the four styles of whisky that are planned by Ladybank:

Thomson plans to produce four styles of whisky: an “unmasked” single malt, a heavily peated style normally associated with Islay whiskies, a sherried style and one using different malting techniques, such as wood smoke instead of peat.

The article's author expresses a little surprise about this:

Doesn’t that go against all we hold dear about whisky: how a Speyside, for example, will taste different from a Highland whisky because of the “terroir”, or region where it’s made?

To which James replies:

Oh, that’s a load of baloney dreamt up by a marketing guy in the Eighties. You can make an Islay-style whisky in Tibet, if you like. You just need the right climate for maturing, but that’s as far as it goes.

The author asks about water. James' comeback:

It’s part of the heathery mists romanticisation of whisky-making, a bit like salmon producers saying Scotland is a very pure place from which to buy your salmon. That might or might not be the case, but it’s a nice story. Water’s not unimportant, but by far the most important contributor is the oak casks in which maturation takes place.

The article also has an alternative view from Bill Lumsden at Glenmorangie. Check out the article.

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*Who is James Thompson? He's been involved in whisky for a long time - most recently the founder of Ladybank Distillery; he started the Whisky School at Bladnoch (now moved to LadyBank); started the Islay Whisky Society; created Scotchwhisky.com (a URL that I covet); and most recently started a blog.

Comments

[kallaskander]

Hi there,

the article touches some questions but of course does not discuss them. An Islay style malt from Tibet? Sure but Thompson admits that you still need the right climate to mature the whisky. That is not a concession towards terroir (I know, I know) but a truism. The article touches the protection of regions issue of the SWA design as well. Peated or not peated is not a sharp criterion for a certain region as the number of upsringing peated expressions from heretofore inconspicious distilleries with exactly that peated malt they did not have before shows.
If a DOC scheme to protect Scottish malt whiskies makes sense than the effort is only worthwhile if you make it watertight. That means back to the roots in cases like the site of maturing a whisky and other things that have strayed from these roots. I for myself would highly welcome protected Scottish whisky areas and the whiskies that would come from them according to DOC rules. But that would make production more expensive as something like "terroir" would come into play. Talisker would have to be matured on Skye and no longer on the mainland. That would mean investing in warehouses on the island.

Greetings
kallaskander