I realize this doesn't relate specifically to museum
business but we have discussed whiskey here
more than once. And I think we're due for a bit
of a lighter topic.
This article came from the New York Times and
I'm probably breaking all kinds of copyright laws
but sometimes ya gotta say "what the ........."!
If I have angered anyone in anyway I apologies.
Jerry Fahey
Exhibits Designer
The University Museum
Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville
Scotch Whiskey: A Rugged Drink for a Rugged Land
July 16, 2003
By R. W. APPLE Jr.
ELGIN, Scotland
IAN URQUHART, a gently spoken, 55-year-old Scotch whiskey
man who heads the firm of Gordon & MacPhail, led the way
through his firm's 6,000-barrel warehouses here in
northeastern Scotland, identifying some of the choicest
lots for an overseas visitor.
"That's 60-year-old Mortlach," he said fondly. "We bottled
some of it in 2000 and more in 2001. There's still a little
left. That cask was filled for my grandfather. It slept
right through my father's generation."
He walked past a cask of 1949 Benromach with the comment,
"Haven't decided when to bottle that," past 10 casks of
1951 Glen Grant in an aisle with barrels piled eight or
nine high, past 1957 Glenlivet and 1988 Highland Park - the
best all-round malt, many say - and on to the "graveyard."
Whiskeys from defunct distilleries rest there, quietly
eking out a kind of afterlife.
"Hillside," Mr. Urquhart said, in the tone of a man
mourning a lost friend. "Demolished for a housing scheme.
Seventy-eight Millburn. Millburn's gone, too. It's a
Beefeater Steak House these days, outside of Inverness."
Scots take their whiskey seriously, and not just because
they fancy a wee dram themselves. (Or not so wee a dram;
Lord Dundee, who drank his whiskey by the tumblerful, once
said, "A single Scotch is nothing more than a dirty
glass.")
The word whiskey, after all, evolved from the Gaelic word
usquebaugh, which means water of life, exactly like eau de
vie in French and aquavit in Scandinavian languages.
Like tartans, tam-o'-shanters, bagpipes and kilts, whiskey
has epitomized Scotland for centuries. Much of the best is
distilled on remote, windswept islands like Orkney and
Islay, often in view of seals and otters frolicking in the
sea, or in the valley of the rushing, moor-girded little
River Spey, which empties into the North Sea just east of
Elgin. It is a rugged drink, always tasting of peat and
often of heather or seaweed, made by rugged individualists
amid rugged landscapes.
More than 11,000 people are employed, directly or
indirectly, in the whiskey industry here. Scotch is
Britain's fifth largest export industry, with about 90
percent of production consumed abroad.
Recent years have been challenging ones for the whiskey
industry. After a boom in the 1970's, a long period of
stagnation set in, and more than a dozen distilleries were
closed, mothballed or destroyed. According to a recent
parliamentary document, British consumption has declined by
30 percent since 1985. Worldwide exports a decade ago
totaled 917 million bottles; last year the figure was 943.4
million. Exports to the United States, where other spirits
have cut into Scotch sales, declined during the same period
to 108 million bottles from 144 million, the Scotch Whiskey
Association reports, although the United States ranked as
the No. 1 consumer in terms of value.
But those statistics conceal a success story. While
familiar, heavily advertised blends like J&B, Dewar's and
Cutty Sark, which constitute the bulk of sales, have had
their troubles, the sales of single malts have soared. Malt
exports to the United States, for example, rose to 8.4
million bottles last year from 5.3 million in 1993.
Shuttered distilleries that escaped the bulldozers are
being reopened, primarily to produce whiskey to be bottled
as single malts. (All distilleries sell some of their
output to blenders.) Glenmorangie, whose own whiskey is the
best-selling malt in Scotland, restarted Ardbeg in 1997;
Gordon & MacPhail refired the stills at Benromach four
years earlier. A new distillery, complete with traditional
pagoda-roofed towers, was built on the island of Arran in
1995.
ALL of that puts history into reverse. Single malts - the
products of single distilleries made in pot stills similar
to those used in Cognac from malted barley dried over peat
fires - were the original Scotch. Not until the invention
of the cheaper, faster columnar or patent still by Aeneas
Coffey in 1830 did the Scots begin making spirits from a
mixture of malted and unmalted grains. Lighter and much
less robust in taste, these grain whiskeys were and are
used to soften the flavors of malts in proprietary blends.
"The best of the blends have great character and
complexity," wrote Michael Jackson in his "Malt Whiskey
Companion," first published in 1989, "but it is a shame so
many are so similar, and that for so many years
orchestrations drowned out the soloists."
Blenders do not disclose the proportions they use, but
people in the industry told me that most use 20 to 30
percent malt whiskey and 70 to 80 percent grain. Premium
blends like Johnnie Walker Black Label, Chivas Regal and
Famous Grouse contain more, and more mature, malt whiskey.
Most Scots and connoisseurs from other countries drink
blends, which are generally less expensive, if they want to
mix their whiskey with water or soda in a predinner drink,
and take their single malts neat, either before, during or,
most commonly, after dinner, like Cognac or Calvados. The
addition of ice to a blend is tolerated as an American
eccentricity; the addition of ice to a single malt is
treated as near-sacrilege.
Each malt whiskey has a unique flavor, just as every
classed, chateau-bottled claret differs from every other
one. But those distilled in any given region share certain
characteristics. The smokiest, peatiest, most iodinic malts
come from Campbeltown, on a West Coast peninsula known as
the Mull of Kintyre, whose mists were celebrated by the
Beatles, and from Islay (pronounced EYE-la), an island near
it. Springbank is a notable Campbeltown; Laphroaig,
Lagavulin and Ardbeg are classic Islays.
Other islands also produce distinctive flavors. Talisker,
from Skye, delivers the sharp tang of seaweed but also an
explosive blast of salt and pepper.
The mildest and most subtle of malts, like Auchentoshan,
come from the lowland distilleries near Edinburgh and
Glasgow.
But the heartland of malt whiskey, with more than half the
distilleries, is Speyside, which stretches from Inverness
almost to Aberdeen, encompassing not only the sparkling
Spey but also smaller streams like the Findhorn, the Isla
and the Livet. Moor and glen, fir and gorse, burn and brae
combine there with the changing patterns of sun and cloud
to conjure scenic magic.
One day during a visit in June, my wife, Betsey, and I saw
five perfect rainbows in just half an hour. On another day
we were invited along with Ishbel Grant of Glenfarclas into
an Arcadian setting - a fishermen's barbecue along the
banks of the Spey.
Glenlivet, the largest-selling malt in the United States,
is made in Speyside. Granted a government license in 1824,
the first distillery to receive one after generations of
illicit whiskey-making, Glenlivet became so widely known
that other distilleries added the word Glenlivet to their
names. Finally, in a famous legal case in 1880, it won the
exclusive right to call itself "The Glenlivet."
Another of Speyside's stars is Glenfiddich, the
largest-selling malt worldwide, which is owned by William
Grant & Sons, an independent company. Faced with giant
competitors, it decided in 1963 to bottle much of its
output as a single malt at a time when few were on the
market. Its success emboldened many others to follow suit.
Like most Speyside whiskeys, Glenlivet and Glenfiddich
have a distinctively light, fruity and honeyed taste.
A number of Speyside inns stock 100 or more malt whiskeys
in their bars, including Minmore House, just down the road
from Glenlivet, whose dining room features the accomplished
cooking of Victor Janssen, a South African who operates the
place.
Once upon a time, whiskey was an artisanal product,
produced by farmers in the wintertime when they could not
work out of doors. The process is simple, if exacting, as
Johnny Miller, the distillery manager at Glenfarclas,
showed me. After threshing, barley is first of all allowed
to germinate by soaking in water, then dried (usually over
peat fires) to halt germination.
Ground and mixed with hot water in a huge vat called a malt
tun, the malted barley becomes a wort. Mixed in another vat
called a washback with yeast - water, barley and yeast are
the only ingredients permitted in making whiskey - the wort
is transformed in about 48 hours into "a kind of sour
beer," as Mr. Miller explained, in a seething, noisy and
rather smelly process.
The "sour beer," known as "wash," is then run successively
through a pair of heated stills, bulbous at the bottom,
narrow at the top, with a swan's neck extending down to a
coiled copper pipe in a tank of cold water that converts
the resulting vapor back into liquid. The first part of the
run (the foreshots) and the last (the feints), both full of
impurities, are eliminated.
What results may not, by law, be called whiskey; it must be
aged in wood for three years before it earns that name. Mr.
Miller let me taste some, and I was astonished. Though
fruit, of course, had played no role in distilling it, it
tasted distinctly of pears and plums, like French eaux de
vie.
The amount and type of peat burned helps to shape the taste
of the whiskey. So does the character of the water; what is
used at Glenfarclas flows down from a granite mountain
called Ben Rinnes.
Glenfarclas is one of the last distilleries in private
hands. Most of the others are owned by big international
corporations with roots in France (Pernod Ricard), Japan
(Suntory), Cuba (Bacardi) and Spain (Allied Domecq), as
well as in England and Scotland. All operate in basically
the same way, with subtle yet important differences.
Jim Cryle, the master distiller at Glenlivet, a muscular
man with steel gray hair, offered me insights into the
process, along with sips of his 12-, 18- and 21-year-old
Scotches, among others, of which the flowery, creamy 18 was
my favorite. The following, he said, are among the most
important determinants of flavor:
The size and shape of the still (tall ones, he thinks, are
best) and how it is heated (by internal steam coils or
fires); what kind of cask is used (old bourbon barrels, old
sherry butts, new oak), how long the whiskey is kept in
wood (once it is bottled, the maturing process stops),
where (a damp cellar or a dry one) and by whom (the
distiller or an independent merchant like Gordon & MacPhail
or William Cadenhead).
Though not as much as with wines, the year of production
has an impact, too. Macallan, a highly regarded distillery
surrounded by fields of highly regarded Golden Promise
barley, offers 26 vintages; an American recently paid
$140,000 for a fifth of each. No wonder Macallan's stills
are pictured on the reverse of the Bank of Scotland's £10
note.
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