Divining for the water of life in Islay whisky distilleries
BY Charles Magill
9th Nov 2023 Drinks
7 min read
A Scotch whisky may take 50 years to make, but the golden-amber liquid is worth the wait, says Scotland's brewers and connoisseurs of the single malt
"Here, try your hand," says
Willie MacNeill, handing me a
spade with a narrow, flanged
blade. I dig into the peat, and
MacNeill forks the slab on to the pile
he is building near the roadside.
A fine rain falls as we stand in
the middle of the extensive peat bog
that forms the centre of Islay, southernmost island of Scotland's Inner
Hebrides.
There is enough peat here
to fuel the island's chimneys and distilleries for hundreds of years. I cut
a few more chunks, then hand over
to MacNeill, a warehouse keeper and
jack-of-all-trades at the nearby Bowmore distillery, and under his practised hand the pile grows rapidly.
As MacNeill digs, Jim McEwan,
the distillery's general manager, and
I walk up the road to the rushing
Laggan River. It is the Laggan's
clean, peat-flavoured waters that
McEwan uses to make the single
malt whisky for which Bowmore is
famous.
"Now you've seen two of
the four key ingredients needed to
make fine Scotch whisky—peat and
pure water," he says. "The other two
are barley and people."
A very Scottish industry
Islay is the "jewel in the crown" of Scotland's booming whisky industry
With a population of only 4,000,
Islay has seven working distilleries.
Its whiskies—smoky-flavoured, peated
and redolent of the sea that surrounds
them as they mature—are not only
the most distinctive of the single
malts (whiskies from a single distillery, made from malted barley) but
an integral part of most blends.
"Ah, Islay," muses Richard Fresson, a veteran blender and former
distillery manager with United Distillers, whose numerous blends include Johnnie Walker Red, the
world's top-selling whisky. "Islay is
the jewel in the crown."
If Islay malts are special among
Scotch whiskies, the industry as a
whole is a jewel among Britain's exports. In 1992 some 826 million bottles of Scotch worth £2 billion were
exported to 190 countries, which
makes it the world's top-selling spirit.
"Islay is the jewel in the crown"
About 100 distilleries are in operation across Scotland. All but eight are
malt distilleries, and almost half of
these can be found within a few miles
of the Spey, the famed salmon river
that runs through soft, rolling country
from the Cairngorm Mountains of
the north-eastern Highlands to the
sea.
The heart of Speyside is the Glen
of Livet, which alone gives its name
to some 20 distilleries. Only one
whisky, however, has the right to call
itself The Glenlivet, and its pale gold
colour and delicate dryness have
earned it a wide following.
Though single malts have recently
caught the fancy of connoisseurs and
become more widely available, 95
per cent of all Scotch whisky sold is
blended from as many as 50 different whiskies, of which about a third
might be malt; the rest is mass-produced grain whisky, made from both
malted and unmalted barley, together
with other cereals.
Whisky lovers reach deep to
describe the flavours they detect.
"Scotch", writes Michael Jackson
in his book The World Guide to
Whisky, "is the most complex of
whiskies, enigmatic in its interlocking sweetness and dryness."
"Professor David Daiches, an Edinburgh authority, managed to taste a bottle of Gilbey's Spey Royal salvaged from the 1941 wreck of a cargo ship"
Connoisseurs in Decanter magazine, found
in Longrow, a Campbeltown single
malt, the aroma of "wet sheep", the
attack of "tiger's claws".
The discriminating go to great lengths to indulge their fancies.
Claive Vidiz, president of the Brazilian Whisky Collectors' Association, has 2,235 different brands and
ages of Scotch in his specially built
museum. A bar owner from Osaka
paid £6,375 at a Glasgow auction
for a bottle of 1926 The Macallan, a
prized Speyside malt.
In search of the
ultimate dram, Professor David
Daiches, an Edinburgh authority,
managed to taste a bottle of Gilbey's
Spey Royal salvaged from the 1941
wreck of a cargo ship. He found the
spirit's quality undiminished by its
long stay under water.
The art of the perfect Scotch
The essence of how to brew the perfect Scotch whisky has remained largely the same for hundreds of years
By law, Scotch whisky must be
distilled in Scotland from water and
malted barley (to which other wholegrain cereals may be added), contain
no additives other than water and
spirit caramel, and be aged in oak
casks for a minimum of three years.
In fact, it may lie in bonded warehouses for up to 50 years, sometimes
bearing signs saying "Quiet, Please,
Whisky Sleeping".
Though the range of malt whiskies
is diverse, the basic distillation processes are common to all. The first
stage is the malting of the barley.
Traditionally, after soaking for two
or three days in tanks of water, it
is spread out on a malting floor to
germinate, thus producing soluble
starches to be converted into sugar.
At Bowmore, Jim McEwan fires
up the malting kiln, and the peat
smoke drifts up through the floor to
cure and flavour the barley. Two men
have turned and raked the barley
every four hours for seven days to
control germination.
"It may lie in bonded warehouses for up to 50 years, sometimes bearing signs saying 'Quiet, Please, Whisky Sleeping'"
"We have very
sophisticated temperature controls,"
says McEwan. "When it gets too hot,
we open the windows. When it's too
cold, we close them."
The malted barley is ground and
mixed with hot water to finish converting the starch to sugar. Later,
yeast is added to cause fermentation
and turn the sugars into alcohol.
Malt whisky is distilled twice in
copper stills, then reduced by the
addition of water to about 65 per cent
alcohol and poured into oak bourbon
or sherry casks to add colour and
flavour.
Though intensive research
has been done to determine the reactions that take place within the cask,
the process still holds many mysteries—one reason why attempts to
duplicate Scotch in Japan and elsewhere have failed.
"So complex are those changes",
writes Russell Sharp, formerly chief
chemist at Chivas Brothers Ltd,
"that, for the foreseeable future, it
seems the most economical and convenient way of ensuring that whisky
matures to perfection will be the
simple one our forebears discovered.
You make a good malt spirit, you fill
it in a good oak cask and you wait for
ten or 20 years."
From a Scottish dram to the real McCoy
During the Prohibition era, whisky made its way to America via smugglers and underground breweries
It is an art that has been perfected
over more than 500 years. While the
origins of distillation are obscure,
some believe it was brought to Ireland, thence to Scotland by Christian
monks.
One story has it that the Irish
invented whisky as an embrocation
for sick mules, and the Scots adopted
it for human consumption.
The first
written mention is in the Scottish
Exchequer Rolls of 1494, where provision was made for "eight bolls of
malt to Friar John Cor wherewith to
make aqua vitae" (water of life).
Whisky became a staple of Scottish life, a stimulant and revitaliser
during the cold, dank winters.
"Everyone drank it, even children,"
writes enthusiast Gordon Brown. "A
matron once asked a child who had
just eagerly swallowed some, 'Does
it not bite, my dear?' Aye,' replied
the youngster, 'but I like the bite."
"The grain whiskies are the concert hall, with its marvellous acoustics, and the malt whiskies are the instruments"
It took the phylloxera epidemic of
the 1870s and 1880s, which decimated the vineyards of France, to
bring whisky to the upper classes.
Deprived of brandy, the British aristocracy turned to whisky and made it
fashionable throughout the Empire.
When Prohibition
closed the American market, smugglers used Caribbean islands as a
base to break the embargo. And when
it was lifted, the Scotch-whisky industry was poised to take advantage
of the newfound desire for good
Scotch—the real McCoy, as it was
called after one of the most notorious
Caribbean smugglers.
Today master blenders carefully
adapt the recipes of their predecessors to arrive at a quality, standard
product. In an Edinburgh blending
room lined with plain sample bottles,
Richard Fresson likens the blender's
art to that of an orchestra conductor.
"The grain whiskies are the concert
hall, with its marvellous acoustics,
and the malt whiskies are the instruments, each playing its part. The end
result is the symphony—something
very complex and very beautiful—in
which the whole is greater than the
sum of its parts."
Discovering the single malt
Together we
sniff eight different whiskies, swirling new and mature spirit in a glass
resembling a brandy balloon.
"Put the
nose right in," Fresson says firmly,
"and take a small sniff. That conditions the mind to what it's getting.
Then return for more to confirm your
findings."
And as we nose a 12-year-old Cardhu single malt, foundation
for the Johnnie Walker blends:
"There, can you smell the heather's
sweetness coming through?"
Until the 1960s almost all malt
whisky was used in blending, and its
existence as a distinctive drink was a
well-kept secret.
"The industry didn't
want to sell single malt and were
slow to perceive a market for it," says
Phillip Hills, founder of The Scotch
Malt Whisky Society. "There was no
motive. Their profits from blended
whisky were enormous."
An Edinburgh tax accountant,
Hills discovered single malt through
a farmer friend who kept a cask of
Glenfarclas by his fireside.
"Once in one-hundred-and-eighth place, The Macallan is now among the top five single malts"
Intrigued,
Hills formed a syndicate with a
dozen friends, bought a 20-gallon
cask for £2,500 and divided it up in
the course of a bibulous evening. The
syndicate grew by word of mouth,
and today it supplies nearly 20,000 members worldwide with selected
malt whiskies at up to 65 per cent
alcohol, half as strong again as standard brands.
As consumer interest grew, distillers began to wake up to the potential
of single malts. In 1963 William
Grant & Sons Ltd became the first
actively to market single malt outside
Scotland, and its Glenfiddich brand is
still among the best known.
Five years later Macallan took the
plunge, invested heavily in new capacity and laid down large stocks of
whisky to mature as single malt. It
was a considerable gamble. Macallan
chairman Allan Shiach likens it to
"someone opening a restaurant, hiring staff, putting linen and crockery
on the table, and saying no clients
can come in for ten years".
The gamble paid off. Once in one-hundred-and-eighth place, The Macallan is now among the top five
single malts.
Nosing the world's best Scotch whisky
Within sight of the Atlantic, the sea air percolates the whisky casks maturing in Islay's distilleries
Before I leave Bowmore, Jim
McEwan leads me into the distillery's 200-year-old warehouse, ten
feet below sea level.
When a gale is
blowing, sea-water seeps in through
the windows, and the damp and briny
air penetrates the serried ranks of
whisky casks, contributing a unique
and essential element to the maturation of Bowmore single malt.
Willie MacNeill taps along the
row of barrels, checking for faults or
rusted hoops. He stops at a hogshead
that makes a slightly hollow sound.
One of only five of its kind, it has
been gently maturing since 1957, 23
years longer than the Queen's private
cask, which sits just a few yards
away.
"When a gale is blowing, sea-water seeps in through the windows, and the damp and briny air penetrates the serried ranks of whisky casks"
And though it once contained
some 55 gallons, as much as half of
this may now have evaporated—the
"angels' share", in industry parlance.
In a lounge overlooking the Atlantic, McEwan hands me a glass of 21-year-old Bowmore. It is a lovely, rich
amber, and there is a reverent silence
as I nose, then sip the wonderful
fluid, its smoky Islay flavours mellowed but still unmistakable.
"That," says McEwan, "just may
be the finest Scotch whisky in the
world."
And, while others may make
rival claims, sitting beside a glowing
peat fire on this magical isle, with the
Celtic tunes of a 21-year-old single
malt playing on my senses, I see no
reason to disagree.
Keep up with the top stories from Reader's Digest by subscribing to our weekly newsletter
Loading up next...
