The Scotch Blog

Springbank wants to get you some learnin'

You can't swing a dead cat without hitting a whisky school now-a-days, and why not? The more schools that pop up, the more likely you are to spend some quality production time at the same place your favorite dram is made.

Springbank, a perennial fan favorite and the distillery that literally put Campbeltown back on the whisky map, has announced their own Whisky School.

The "headmaster" will be Springbank’s Director of Production Frank McHardy, who will be on hand throughout each of the five-day “terms” to pass on the extensive knowledge he has gained during 44 years in the whisky industry.

Frank McHardy explained:

Springbank’s status as the only distillery in Scotland to carry out 100 per cent of the whisky-making process on-site, from malting the barley through to bottling its own whisky, makes it the ideal location to learn the craft which has been practised in Scotland for hundreds of years.

Lyons goes to Speyside - Roll out the barrels

Will Lyons writes for Scotland on Sunday and has done some fantastic pieces on the Indian situation. Recently he paid a visit to Benromach Distillery and even put in a day's work.

Today's guest story was originally posted on Scotland on Sunday, but Will told me it would be fine to repost here.

As a complementary piece, check out my story on Benromach - though Will's is better.

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Roll out the barrels

Will Lyons

AT A TIME of day when most of us are just about managing to negotiate a bowl of cornflakes, Mike Ross, the stillman at Benromach distillery, is already at his post, pouring two tonnes of malted barley into a mash tun full of warm water.

"We have to be very careful not to get this wrong," he says, staring straight ahead at a small temperature gauge on the opposite wall.

Handing the controls over to me, he adds, "A slight miscalculation at this stage and we could end up with either not enough sugar or too much sugar." A strong smell of Horlicks fills the room as I tentatively spin the lever, careful to keep the temperature at 64.5ûC.

Beyond the industrial sound of rushing water, the distillery manager Keith Cruickshank paces down the floor. "How we doing?" he asks. "Make a mess of this and you'll throw the whole operation out."

Welcome to Speyside - the engine room of the Scotch malt whisky industry. As the three of us peer nervously into a churning mash tun, around us the region hums with the noise of hundreds of distilleries, many of them working 24 hours a day, seven days a week, sweating it out to meet the growing demand for Scotland's golden spirit. These are good times for Scotch whisky.

Last year exports of Scotch generated a record £2.5 billion, with nearly 90 million cases exported worldwide. To put that into context, for every second in the day the equivalent of 33 bottles are shipped overseas, earning the industry £78 - or £6,739,200 a day. Laid end to end, those bottles would stretch from Perth, Scotland, to Perth, Australia.

Industry analysts say this could be the beginning of something even greater. On the horizon lie India and China, two of the biggest spirits markets in the world. In just ten years, growth in China has risen from 0.7 million litres to 5.7 million litres, fuelled by a burgeoning middle class which has acquired a taste for whisky. In India the potential is even greater. While the Chinese still predominantly drink beer, India is largely a brown-spirit-drinking culture. Attend a dinner party in Mumbai and you are more likely to be served a glass of whisky than wine or beer. The prize is massive.

To China and India can be added renewed demand from South America, eastern Europe, Russia and, of course, the United States. Suddenly, owning a distillery doesn't look such a bad investment.

Sherry IS wine, dumbass.

Today's story comes from the inimitable Mark Reynier of Bruichladdich. This is a response to purists who decry the use of wine casks for additional maturation.

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There is a school of opinion that objects to the use of wine casks for single malt whisky. This raises several controversial issues. True, wine casks have indeed been exploited by some bottlers for outright marketing reasons but I argue that this subject is a much more complex one than just marketing.

Firstly I confess, guilty as charged, that at Bruichladdich we have been using wine casks er…since 1881. Wine casks for whisky are not new - sherry, after all, is a wine.

“I have noticed, in the forty-five years since I began to study whisky, that the general style of most if not all kinds has changed…The older whiskies were darker in colour, from being kept in golden Sherry or Madeira casks, rather sweeter in taste, and rather heavier in texture; the newer are lighter in both the first and the last aspect, and much drier in taste.” This was the introduction of Bourbon casks (made from Quercus Alba, or white oak) and was written in 1920.

Father of our country; Whiskey peddler

I was invited to the opening ceremony for the George Washington Distillery on Friday March 30th in Mount Vernon, Virginia.

It was a very nice event - yet a little too politically focused for my tastes. There were way too many speeches - the Director of Historic Mount Vernon; the head of the Mount Vernon Ladies Association; The President of the Distilled Spirits Council; the chairman of the Virginia Alcohol Beverage Council; a  Virginia State Senator; John Manfreda from the Alcohol Tax & Trade Bureau; and more. Yet somehow Virginia Governor Tim Kaine didn't deem it important enough to attend.

F'ing politicians.

How many distilleries does it take...

Last time I told you about all of those distilleries in Ireland...I lied.

There are only three distilleries in all of Ireland. Bushmills in Northern Ireland, which produces only malt whiskey; Midleton in  County Cork (Republic of Ireland) and Cooley, also in the Republic of Ireland (but real close to Northern Ireland).

No, I didn't forget the famous Jameson - the "Jameson Distillery" a popular tourist attraction in Dublin, is simply a museum, while Jameson whiskey is actually produced further south, in Cork, at the Midleton distillery - along with Powers, Tullamore Dew, Murphy’s, Redbreast, Midleton, and a number of other brands (not all of them Pernod brands - but that's another story).

An Irish Whiskey Primer

Although we've touched upon the differences between Irish and Scotch whiskies in various stories over the past years, this seems like as good a time as any to revisit.

Like so many things in life, there are no hard and fast rules about Irish whiskies:

• The main difference between Irish and Scotch is the fact that Irish whiskies are distilled three times. Well, that used to be true until Cooley came along and started producing twice-distilled Irish whiskies.

As you may know, each distillation increases the alcoholic strength of the new make spirit - the first distillation results in a spirit in the 20% range while the second distillation results in something in the high 60s - low 70s% range. The final distillation brings the spirit up to about mid-80s%. But despite what people think, the spirit is not put into the cask at this strength. Instead it is diluted down to 63-65% and then put in the cask.

Isle of Arran

At Whisky Live Paris I also had the opportunity to meet and talk with Euan Mitchell (Director of Sales) and Douglas Davidson (Managing Director) of Isle of Arran.

Euan Mitchell: The distillery opened in 1995 - the first middle cut of spirit was taken at 2:29pm on the  29th of June 1995, if you want to get specific. We celebrated the 10th anniversary last summer, but we delayed the launch of our 10 year old until spring of this year to ensure a good volume of stocks.

Blend it like Bleech-em

Apparently, a certain large multi-national liquor conglomerate has decided that blending "high quality" Scotch malts with Indian made malt and grain whiskies, is a good way to help ease into the Indian market.

This will certainly keep costs down on the production side as well as on the shelf - so you can't argue with the concept from a purely financial perspective.

But, of course the purist will contend that this product will be an abomination. Clearly, if the intent was to mix the Scotch malt with Indian molasses-based "whisky" (which is prevented from being sold throughout the world because it fails to meet the definition of whisky as an alcoholic beverage made from grains), I'd completely agree.

In this case it's a little more complex. Clearly the product will not be allowed to be labeled as "Scotch".

Islay's Farm Distillery

On my last visit to Islay, I managed to take a morning off from the work at the Bruichladdich Academy and run over to the west side of the island to visit Kilchoman. This was not my first visit to Kilchoman, but it was my first chance to sit down with Anthony Wills, managing director.

Kilchoman - keeping in the best traditions of the Gaelic language, isn't pronounced exactly like it is spelled; but this one is easier than some - simply ignore the superfluous "c" - with no particular stress on any syllable.

kill - ho - mun

The distillery grounds, still partially under construction (as of my visit), are very attractive. The main production equipment is housed in an original, though extensively renovated, mill building while the visitor centre shop and cafe are in what was originally a cattle barn.

A small gourmet shop is also on site, and the continuing construction speaks to the imminent arrival of several more boutique shops. (Update: Anthony tells me that a flower shop and gift shop have joined the gourmet shop since my visit - all three are owned separately from the distillery).

The distillery tries to be environmentally friendly recycling the fast majority of refuse: the draff going to feed the farm's cattle, while the waste from the stills is spread on the fields as fertilizer.

The first distillery to be built on Islay in 124 years, the distillery officially opened on June 3rd during the 2005 Islay Whisky Festival, however it wasn't until December 14th 2005 that Kilchoman filled their first seven casks - and they did not distill again until the end of March 2006.

Made in America

A couple of Fridays ago, I received an email from Eric Felten (who writes the How's Your Drink? column for the Wall Street Journal). Eric was in the midst of writing a story* and wanted to ask my opinion on the small number of American single malt whiskies currently on - or waiting to hit - the market.

Kevin, I'm working up a column on American single malts, and thought I'd touch base with you to see what your impression of them is -- if you've tried any of them.

What do you think of the concept -- that is, does it make any sense to make Scotch-style whisky in the US when the Scots seem to be doing it pretty well already?

Is it possible to devise a malt whisky that has an American identity?

An interesting question, to which I answered:

Eric,

I have not tried any of them (aside from Anchor's Old Potrero single malt rye).

In concept - Why not?

The problem is that most Americans don't understand that "Scotch" IS whiskey or that (or how) single malts differ from blends. So will they understand that "Wasmund's" is a single malt -  like Glenlivet, Glenfiddich, but not a "Scotch" and not a Bourbon?

American single malts will have the unenviable task of differentiating themselves from Bourbon; Blends; Scotch; Irish Whiskey; Canadian Whisky; etc.

If the boutique American single malts are charging based on their cost (or aspirational pricing) as opposed to what the market will bear - they will have a really tough time.

For better or worse the whisky with an American identity is Bourbon.