Great Scotch! What's old is new in Scotland, where malt masters are proving their traditional spirit is still evolving with exciting new expressions that are pushing the envelope in the whisky world Posted: Friday, December 01, 2006
By Jack Bettridge
The Glenmorangie distillery boasts the tallest pot stills in Scotland.
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"This is the closest thing we've ever done to a breakfast whisky."
Dr. Bill Lumsden is only half joking as he displays a wine glass full of Champagne-colored
Glenmorangie Scotch to the few dozen spirits writers who are eager to sample the master
distiller's newest limited release—even at a 9:30 a.m. reception. The whisky was finished in
barrels that formerly held Château Margaux wine and it's a gingery, spicy quaff with hints of
carmelized fruit, tobacco and hard candy that well complements the traditional Scottish breakfast
being eaten.
No one in New York City's Le Bernardin restaurant is complaining this morning, but certain
elements of this scenario would set some Scotch whisky traditionalists atwitter. A single-malt
whisky made in Bordeaux barrels proffered as a breakfast drink?
After all, tradition may not be prized much these days, but Scotch whisky is one area in which
the age-old is held in high regard. A 30-year-old house may be a teardown, but we still revel in
the centuries of history behind each dram, we celebrate the ancient settings from which it arises
and we gladly pay extra dollars for extra years in a cask. Scotch is one of those quaint, maybe a
little staid, art forms whose utter changelessness we take comfort in.
Except that that last statement is a myth.
Scotch may be the world's oldest whisky, it may improve with age and it certainly promotes
itself as the model of tradition, but it is also one of the most vibrant categories in the spirits
industry when it comes to innovation and even controversy.
Put away your men-in-kilts image for a moment and consider that the last decade has been among
the most evolutionary for Scotch—so much so that the preeminent industry association has had to
take steps to redefine and reclassify some of its most basic products. Neither a better, nor a
more interesting time to drink Scotch has ever existed. The breadth of quality drams is like never
before and the growing pains within the industry have exploded into newspaper headlines.
Go to a well-stocked liquor store. Single-malt Scotch whiskies, which were a blip on the
spirits radar screen a few decades ago, now crowd the shelves and most brands have a range of
expressions from which to choose. Some are designed for specific situations, like The Dalmore with
its cigar malt. Some distinguish themselves by trusty age statements, but increasingly bottles
trumpet the unfamiliar nomenclature of cask finishes and wood treatment. Take a look at the
blended whiskies. You'll likely find bottles older than some prized malts.
It's right to ask how something so old can be so new. The oldest written reference to whisky
making in Scotland—an entry in an exchequer's account book—dates to 1494, but current thinking has
distillation entering the country a thousand years before that with the arrival of Christianity.
You can quibble all you want over a millennium of heritage one way or the other, but Scotch has
been around long enough that it would seem to be beyond innovation. To understand why it still
evolves, it helps to see that its long history has been a tale of shifting political fortunes, and
never have its makers failed to take advantage of serendipity in the marketplace.
Consider, for instance, that the country's most emblematic export—single-malt Scotch—was next
to unknown a few decades ago. That is truest in the United States, where virtually the entire
market was blended Scotch before Glenfiddich first imported singles here in the early 1960s. Even
now, despite its lofty reputation, most of what is distilled as a single-malt whisky makes its way
into blends. Nevertheless, single malts have exploded into the marketplace in recent decades as
the industry tries to slake the whisky drinking public's thirst for new experiences.
THE FINISHED PRODUCT
The clamor for new taste sensations is insatiable even as more and more of Scotland's 90-some
distilleries have created single-malt bottlings out of whisky formerly sold to blenders. And that
is where the industry's hottest innovation—cask-finished whisky—comes in.
The concept is pretty simple and was probably done by someone on a limited basis long before
Glenmorangie made it famous with its Port wood finish in 1994. Any whisky takes most of its flavor
from the cask in which it matures. That's why age—the time it spends soaking into the staves—is
such an important concept. Unlike Bourbon makers, who are bound by law to age their spirit in new
barrels, Scotch makers can reuse casks—even ones that once held other products. Because of the
Bourbon industry's steady supply of once-used, relatively inexpensive barrels, a majority of
Scotch is aged in them. However, Sherry, Port and Madeira barrels are also common. As you might
suspect, the liquid that first inhabited a barrel implies a particular flavor on the next whisky
to find a home there. At Glenmorangie they thought, "Why not take our core expression that has
rested in Bourbon barrels for 10 years gaining the signature vanilla notes and add some fruit and
spice by aging it a few more years in a Port barrel?"
Judging by sales and the amount of imitation by other distilleries, the experiment was an
unqualified success, one which Glenmorangie has followed with other finishes that have included
casks from fine French wine houses like the aforementioned Château Margaux as well as Château
d'Yquem. Techniques used by some of its competitors are even more arcane. (Auchentoshan has a
three-wood finish, using Sherry, Port and Bourbon. The Glenlivet finishes in unused Limousin oak.)
Lumsden calls the practice the first genuine innovation in the last 30 years. Nevertheless, some
purists believe that it compromises Scotch whisky tradition. I first witnessed that resistance a
number of years ago at an introduction by Bowmore of a selection of whiskies that had been
finished in Port and Bordeaux wine casks. While most found them fascinating, one guest implored
then-master distiller Jim McEwan (now of Bruichladdich), "Please, don't do this."
His point was that a Bourbon barrel was the natural and customary partner for the whisky; it
had always been aged that way and there was no reason to change. That would be an arguable—if a
little Luddite—point, if it were true. "Bourbon casks didn't become the standard aging barrel in
Scotland until after Prohibition ended," points out Fergus Hartley, the global sales director for
Bowmore. "Before that, all sorts of casks were used: wines, Sherry, Port, rum barrels." His is a
good argument: how would Scotland get barrels from an industry that was shut down? Furthermore,
beginning in the seventeenth century, ever stricter taxes made distilling effectively illegal
until regulations were softened in 1823. With essentially all whisky being moonshine, it's
unlikely that anyone would have been importing American barrels even after Bourbon was invented in
the 1780s. If distillers aged their whisky at all, they likely used whatever barrels were
available.
Certainly options for Scotch aging have always existed and been availed by whisky makers. In
today's climate, even producers who aren't involved in anything as radical as cask finishes are
fine-tuning their product through other kinds of wood management. The Macallan and Highland Park,
both predominantly Sherry-aged whiskies, sometimes meld a low percentage of Bourbon-aged whiskey
into the mix. The Macallan countered the trend to wine casks with its Fine Oak in 2004, which uses
Bourbon barrels alongside Sherry casks. Russell Anderson, distillery manager at Highland Park on
the island of Orkney at Scotland's northernmost tip, takes the approach of re-creating Bourbon
barrels in the image of his own casks. When barrels are sent from America, they are disassembled
to save shipping space. Coopers in Scotland put them back together. At Highland Park, the staves
are reshaped to create a larger vessel. The practice creates more surface area with which the
whisky can interact.
Many other variables contribute to the unique character of single malts: the still shape, how
it is operated, the type of barley used, the local water and climate, even air quality. The
Glenlivet, for instance, is made high on a hill in fresh air overlooking moorlands. Many Islay
Scotches are made at sea level, with salt air imparting its flavor on the whisky. Anderson points
to the consistent climate at Highland Park and the fact that the whisky makers do their own floor
malting of barley (the stage at which relative amounts of peat smoke are infused in the grain),
but he reckons that 60 to 80 percent of the flavor of whisky still comes from the wood.
Even casual Scotch drinkers will note that the packaging of Scotch now contains more and more
information about the way the spirit was aged. That is an attempt to explain the idiosyncrasies of
the product. Most Scotch makers point to the education of drinkers as one of the most important
tasks in the current atmosphere of innovation. David Cox of The Macallan simply has to point to
his title, director of brand education, to show the importance the brand puts on teaching
customers about the product.
If special finishes ruffled a few traditionalist feathers, they offered a wide spectrum of new
choices to the not-so-stodgy majority, who could taste something special without paying the
nosebleed prices charged for super-aged Scotches found at auction. "The consumer is demanding to
be excited," says McEwan. "He wants to come through the cloud base and really fly. It's the
consumer that pays my salary and not the collector."
Things turned a little weird, however, when it wasn't just wine casks that were used for aging.
How does a Tabasco sauce finish sound? Some found that they could cut corners by adding wood chips
into the barrel to promote faster aging. Others just skipped the aging process altogether and
added the wine itself. Some Scotches were finished in casks from other regions in Scotland, such
as a Speyside whisky poured into former Islay casks. "Islay cask finishes? Why would you want to
do that?" asks McEwan, a maker of Islay whisky. "Why bugger up a good Speyside with an Islay
finish?" The deeper issue was that it confused consumers who might read the word "Islay" on the
label and assume the whisky had actually been aged on the Western island known for the effect its
sea spray has on its heavily peated whiskies.
It was in this atmosphere of confusion that the Scotch Whisky Association (SWA) stepped in and
defined Scotch whisky vis-à-vis the kind of casks it can be aged in. The industry organization
essentially ruled that extra wood finishes were allowable as long as a pedigree and a precedent
existed for aging Scotch in the type of barrel used. In other words, wine casks and rum barrels
were all right, but not Tabasco sauce tubs, even though they are actually reused Bourbon
barrels.
Normally the SWA trade group protects the Scotch industry from outside elements: a draconian
500 percent tariff in India, the counterfeiting of whisky in China, the Brazilian whisky that
chooses to call itself Loch Nest. According to Campbell Evans, the SWA's director of government
and consumer affairs, the association employs five attorneys and at any given time is involved in
some 50 lawsuits. Among other things, the SWA promotes responsible drinking. It isn't as often
that it is called upon to resolve intramural disputes, but they fall within its purview, as Evans
points out. "We are a trade body that looks after the interest of the industry by protecting
Scotch whisky as a drink."
Despite the fact that innovators such as Glenmorangie's Lumsden allow that finishes were
"gimmicky with the addition of what I would call fairy dust," not everyone is pleased with the
SWA's guidelines.
John Glaser, who owns Compass Box Whisky, is an independent bottler who has put together a
portfolio of some of the most groundbreaking whiskies available. One of his products, Spice Tree,
which he no longer makes, drew the ire of the SWA. It was created by the addition of barrel staves
made of French Limousin oak. Glaser says that the SWA's view is unnecessarily narrow since he
feels that the practice has created a better product. "As an American in Britain, I can look at
things with a fresh eye. I'm putting higher quality staves in the cask. But they told me, 'There's
one thing you have to understand: quality is unimportant.' These guys are lawyers. They are not
whisky makers."
Evans says the SWA is simply taking action to apply the legal definition of Scotch whisky. "If
people can find ways of innovating within that, we say 'good luck' to them."
Glaser has done just that. His newest expression, Oak Cross, utilizes refilled Bourbon barrels
on which he has placed cask heads made of his prized new French oak.
Naming disputes have long been the province of Scotch whisky. In 1824, The Glenlivet became one
of the first distilleries to register under the new licensing rate laws and took its name from the
valley where it was produced. It became so well thought of that other whisky names referenced
Glenlivet, the place, whether they were made there or not. At one point, so many whisky brands
were named for the little glen that it was joked that Glenlivet meant "the long valley." The
company finally took the matter to court and secured exclusive rights to the name in 1884. Andrew
Nash, The Glenlivet's brand director underscores the absurdity: "There even was a whisky called
Aberlour Glenlivet. Aberlour is nowhere near Glenlivet."
About that time Scotch whisky was spreading throughout the world in the guise of a relatively
new product: blended Scotch. The invention of the efficient column still had made whisky
production more consistent and less expensive. Also, Cognac makers had been forced out of
production by a grape scourge called phylloxera. Blends stepped into the market in a dramatic way.
Makers of malt whisky saw the newcomer as an interloper and took their beef to the government in
an attempt to have blends outlawed. In 1909, a British royal commission ruled in favor of blends,
and until fairly recently, single malts packaged by themselves were a nonentity.
CARDHU-GATE
But as unknown as single malts might have been, a third type of Scotch whisky, vatted malt,
rivaled it for obscurity. The category is something of a cross between single-malt and blended
whisky and it has been getting a lot of attention lately mainly due to a controversy that arose
when a former single malt—Cardhu—joined its ranks.
A little nomenclature is in order. The term "single-malt Scotch whisky" defines four things
about a Scotch whisky. First, it was produced in Scotland. Second, its grain recipe is purely
malted barley. Third, its distillation was performed in pot stills. (Pot still distillation is
more labor-intensive and expensive and renders whisky that matures at a slower rate.) Fourth—as
the word single indicates—it is the product of one distillery.
Blended Scotch whisky, as it was described by the panel of 1909, defines a mixture of not only
malt whiskies from different distilleries, but grain whiskies (spirits made from several different
grains and distilled in a column still). It is the admixture of the grain whiskies, not the
blending of different single malts, that makes a blend a blend. The core of the 1909 decision was
that such whiskies could be called Scotch whisky as long as they were identified as blended.
A third category of whisky combines single-malt whiskies from different distilleries, but
doesn't include grain whiskies. Until recently they were known as vatted malts or pure malts, and
depending on the number of constituent malts could be called double or triple malts. They enjoy a
long tradition that dates back to at least the nineteenth century, when the term "vatted malt" was
first used. Essentially, malts from various stills are chosen with the intent of creating a whisky
that is more complex than the product of each distillery. Some of Scotland's most exquisite
expressions have arisen out of such skillful mingling of malts. Vatted malts have only recently
made a stand in the United States, with the traditional blenders Famous Grouse and Johnnie Walker
introducing them. But in Britain, it has been customary to create limited-edition vatted malts to
celebrate events such as royal weddings and the anniversaries of its rulers. Not too shabby,
eh?
If vatted malts have an image problem, it stems from a name that rings none too elegant and
that few understand. A vat sounds like something you do your laundry in, and even as I type this
into my computer, the spell-checker keeps reminding me that vatted is not a verb in its
dictionary. So it's easy to understand why whiskies like Johnnie Walker Green began proclaiming
themselves pure malts rather than vatted. Pure in that sense meant the spirit was purely a malt
product, that is, no grain whisky was added. It is something like designating that a sweater is
pure wool—the wool may have come from different sheep, but the term pure tells us that no cotton
or polyester was twisted in with it. But pure also confers a mark of quality.
Which is why some cried foul when Cardhu, a former single malt, defected to the pure malt side
in 2003. At the time, the spirits giant Diageo, which makes Johnnie Walker, was faced with
shortages of Cardhu, which it offers as a single malt and as one of the components in its blends.
The Speyside single malt had boomed in sales in only two or three years, particularly in Spain,
France and Portugal. The problem was that Cardhu is most widely sold as a 12-year-old malt and no
one had foreseen such demand a dozen years ago. The solution, it was decided, was to reintroduce
it as a vatted malt, mingling Cardhu with other malts produced in the region. What Diageo did not
do was draw much attention to the change. The bottle and label remained largely the same, with the
word pure substituted for the word single before the word malt.
Diageo pointed out that it was trying to deal with unprecedented demand and that it had used
the term pure because it was more easily understood by the speakers of Romance languages who
defined the demand. Still, the company worked with the SWA to change its labeling and started a
program to educate the public to the nature of its product. Nevertheless, the damage was done, and
Diageo switched the product back to single malt. (Before purists claim victory, they might
consider that because of continuing shortages, Cardhu is now no longer available in some markets,
including the United States.)
With Cardhu returned to relative normalcy, SWA decided that a naming convention was needed to
clarify that a pure malt wasn't a single malt. It came up with regulations that will compel whisky
labels to refer to products once known as pure or vatted malts as blended-malt Scotch whisky.
Another requirement is that whisky named for a specific distillery must arise exclusively from
that distillery. That means that the Diageo product could not be called Cardhu blended-malt Scotch
whisky even had the company kept the product.
Even if you don't happen to believe that the term pure malt posed a dire threat to single
malts, it is hard not to see the logic of the second rule. Cardhu is not only a brand, but a
distillery. Naming a whisky after a distillery carries a clear implication that the whisky comes
from it.
"We very much hope there will be clarity," says the SWA's Evans. But some say that while the
decision cleared up the confusion over Cardhu, it didn't do much to help the cause of the blended
whisky formerly known as vatted malt. Evans counters that the nomenclature was arrived at by the
membership of the SWA, all of whom are distillers, blenders or brand owners. "Vatted was seen as
pejorative. That was the view of people who were making and marketing Scotch whisky."
Glaser, who makes blended and blended malt whiskies, as well as a very rare grain whisky,
disagrees: "Blended is death. It is a tainted word. People in the industry like me think [the new
terminology is] a bad idea. What was really the driver? If it was to clarify then they failed. If
it was to elevate single-malt whisky, then they succeeded."
But a more basic question is: "why is it bad to blend?" The short answer is that it isn't.
Blending is an art that is necessary to almost all brown spirit production from whisky to brandy
to rum. In the very basic sense of the verb—to mix together—single-malt whiskies are blended. In
the interest of consistency, bottlers mingle spirits from different barrels at different ages to
create the end result. The youngest whisky in the mix is reflected in the age statement on the
bottle. Without such blending each bottle would reflect the different tastes and maturation rates
particular to each barrel. Instead, much care is taken to make sure you don't taste a difference
from bottle to bottle. (The exceptions are special products such as The Balvenie Single Barrel,
which comes from carefully selected barrels, but cannot guarantee total consistency beyond a basic
taste profile from cask to cask.)
HAPPY BLENDING
So then why, if you are going to blend malts from different barrels, would it be so horrible to
blend malts from different distilleries? Well, it wouldn't. The problem lies more in the name.
Blends of any kind are considered cheap for a number of reasons. The first is a general image
problem fueled by snobbery for singles malts and the typically lower cost of blended Scotch. It
also doesn't help that blends in America and Canada are by definition less artisanal. In the
United States, neutral grain spirits can be added to the mix. In Canada, a blended whisky can be
distilled at high proofs that rob natural flavor.
Misconceptions aside, whisky drinkers in the know will likely point to the grain whisky in
blended Scotch when they slam it. It is distinguished as grain because most of its mash bill is
not barley, but wheat, corn, rye or oats. Grain whiskies are not made in the cunning little still
houses in the glen that we've come to think of when we romanticize Scotch whisky, but in large
industrial affairs with column stills that continuously churn out spirit to blend with malts. The
process is cheaper, but is grain whisky automatically inferior?
Not necessarily is the answer implied in the new super-aged blended Scotches that have hit the
market in recent years. Two years ago, Chivas Regal introduced its 18-year-old to complement the
standard 12-year-old Chivas. (The company also makes the 21-year-old Royal Salute.) Not long
before, Dewar's had introduced its Signature hyperpremium to go with the standard brand and its
relatively new 12-year-old. Johnnie Walker, one of the pioneers of premium Scotch, populates the
upper strata of blends with its 18-year-old Gold Label and the hyperpremium Blue Label, which
makes no age statement but distinguishes itself with the number of high quality malts in the
mix.
The consensus seems to be that, just as with malt whisky, long aging of grain whisky is
worthwhile (the stated age on the bottle defines the youngest age of the whisky within). The proof
is in the blends, which are all laudable and sometimes exquisite. Craig Johnson, brand director of
Chivas Regal, says, "Grain is not bad. Grain is how whisky is made all around the world. The
problem is that blends dropped the ball a bit about educating people."
He points out that each product—single malt and blend—has a different objective: malts are
about the place and character and blends are about the art. "Single malts are like the soloists
and the blends are the orchestra," he says. "It costs more to put together an orchestra."
An important component to that ensemble is the grain whisky, which helps the blend to meld
together and also brings cake icing notes. The refrain about the band or the team making up a
blend is familiar, but Glaser of Compass Box is such a fan of grain whisky that he bottles it by
itself.
"It's the most underestimated, unappreciated whisky in the world," says Glaser. "Good grain
whisky can really make malt whisky sexy. It's the feminine alter ego of malt whisky." The problem
as he sees it is that grain whiskies made for cheaper blends are often aged in bad casks.
Not only are manufacturers elevating their blends, but they are making the logical connections
to the single malts of which they are made. Dewar's parent, Bacardi, recently introduced
Aberfeldy, the core constituent of the blend, to America for the first time and is making no bones
about what it is.
"A lot of companies hide the connection between the single malt and the blend," says Ewan Gunn,
the Dewar's brand ambassador in the United States. "We're very proud of both the Aberfeldy and the
Dewar's brand, and we see no shame in associating the two."
The Aberfeldy distillery was established in 1898 to feed the needs of Dewar's, which was a
global success story almost from its inception, owing to clever and innovative marketing
techniques. Gunn says it's only now that the company has had enough whisky to pour much of it into
its two single-malt releases, a 12- and a 21-year-old.
Chivas Regal and Johnnie Walker have also been fairly candid about their sources of malts. In
the former case, the cores are Strathisla and Longmorn. In the latter case, some of the malts are
made available in its the Classic Malts Selection, which includes Talisker, Oban, Lagavullin,
Dalwhinnie, Cragganmore and Glenkinchie. (The Selection recently added a Distillers Edition, which
comprises double-matured versions of those whiskies using Sherry and Port casks.) Knowing the core
malts can make for a very interesting taste experiment for both blended and single-malt drinkers.
In the case of these better blends, it's easy to discern how the malts contribute, and often you
can understand how the blending has created an important complement to the components.
It is blended whisky that most probably made the malt explosion of recent years possible.
Blends can certainly be credited with subsidizing lesser malts that might have gone silent through
the years were it not for their sales to blends. Moreover, it was blends, with their more
accessible taste profiles, that made Scotch whisky universally popular before drinkers discovered
the idiosyncrasies of malts.
Cox, of The Macallan, says that the frenetic horse trading between distilleries and blenders
has become something of a thing of the past, however. So much can be sold as single malts that
whisky not earmarked for a blend when it was put in the cask doesn't much exist. The Macallan has
systematically dropped its contracts as they lapsed with blenders that are not a part of the
Edrington Group of which it and Highland Park are members. "We only have a finite amount of stock
and a small percentage of it is available for blends," says Cox. "Contracts with third-party
blenders are no longer renewed."
The Macallan, of course, is at the forefront of the other great trend in Scotch whisky: the
craze for super-aged trophy bottles often found only through auctions. In this era of whisky
shortages, any barrels that may somehow get lost in the warehouse can easily find a home as part
of a limited release that proudly crows its age.
The Macallan was one of the first to prove that whiskies aged for unheard of lengths like 50
years could be sold for thousands of dollars a bottle. Its first releases of such whisky began in
1983 and the brand felt very comfortable that that market was developing. But Cox also admits a
bit of luck. In the 1960s, when Glenfiddich brought forth single malt, the people who ran The
Macallan decided the future lay in those properties and therefore the company now enjoys a good
stock of very old whisky. The rare and fine brands of The Macallan not only sell themselves, but
help to sell the distillery's younger expressions as they draw attention to them.
Other brands are finding a market in that rare ether as well. Glenfiddich recently auctioned a
bottle from 1937 for $20,000 and Bowmore typically puts out one or more expressions at above 30
years of age once a year. Why don't more do it? First, they'd have to have been prescient enough
to lay down enough whisky for the purpose decades ago. Second, not every whisky is capable of
attaining such age. Whisky runs the risk of becoming too tannin with age and an old barrel can
self-destruct. What's more, a barrel is constantly losing volume and much of that is in alcohol
content. If a spirit's proof drops below 80 (40 percent), it can no longer be defined as Scotch
whisky, and then you have nothing unless you meld it with younger, stronger whiskies, but that
would defeat the purpose.
Still, whiskies that reach that kind of age in good shape are ethereal, almost Cognac-like
drams that have replaced peatiness—even in Islay—with flavors of Christmas pudding and
ambrosia.
Highland Park has put out a number of single-cask issues that are uncut from barrel strength,
not chill-filtered, very idiosyncratic and hard to find. Most of its whiskies are not worthy of
such treatment, says Anderson. "It's a hell of a difficult job to forecast what a whisky is going
to be like in decades to come. I don't even know what I'm doing next week," he says with a laugh.
"If I knew, I would make nothing but single malts. But I don't. It's just a black art."
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