Loch Fyne Whiskies - Scotch Whisky Review

The interview pages of our Scotch Whisky Review are the most acclaimed and eagerly awaited part of the newsletter. They take the form of a simple question and answer session with many of the industry's leading lights.

This section contains some selected parts of the various interviews held to date. Each interview is considerably longer than the selections presented here.
All copyright Loch Fyne Whiskies.

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MR WHISKY
Extract from SWR2 Interview with Dr. Alan Rutherford during Autumn 1994 at which time he was head of production for United Distillers.

LFW: Have you considered changing the rate of peating to create a different style?
A Lowland distillery is capable of producing a heavy, peaty whisky just as Jura can produce a light whisky. We once made some unpeated Caol Ila, owing to a surplus of peated whisky at that time and to keep the distillery open. Very nice whisky it was too! Heritage and continuity of peating is important and there is no reason to change.

LFW: Could a Still Man be replaced?
Yes, the technology is there, but we must consider if it is financially worthwhile or if it is something we want to do. I’m told you can do without the pilot of an aeroplane but no airline will consider it because of passenger expectations!
Malt whisky is about heritage and craft. There is automation in many malt distilleries but we’re in the hand crafting business and we believe that the mash-man and the still-man have a role to play and are very important.

LFW: What about diluting water?
Dilution at the distillery is done with natural, untreated water off the hill. At the bottling hall de-mineralised mains water is used which has no character at all. We have a few minor blends that are shipped overseas at high strength and bottled outside Scotland but we have enough science to ensure the water is de-mineralised to our specification so that the result in Australia is the same as in Scotland. Where the whisky is diluted to 40% is irrelevant. In fact almost all of our brands are bottled in Scotland.
At the time of bottling, all our whiskies are filtered at a temperature of plus 4¡C. Our research shows that this removes the bulk of the undesirable, cloud producing oils without discernibly removing flavour for the experienced whisky drinker. Some of our competitors’ brands are filtered at considerably lower temperatures removing many more flavour elements. Some of the pale blends from other companies are filtered at minus 10¡!

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THE SALESMAN
Extract from SWR3 Interview with Andrew Dewar-Durie during Spring 1995 at which time he was Managing Director of Allied Distillers

LFW: Some may claim that all brands are the same but with a different label.
Absolutely not! Anyone can clearly differentiate and discriminate between different brands. Each of ADL’s brands is individually crafted in order to be unique. But it is more than taste. Each brand carries the promise of satisfaction for its target drinker’s needs but also offers its consumers added value through a unique identity or image with which they empathise.
Individual malt whiskies are brands and surely none tastes more different than Laphroaig!

LFW: Malts account for only 5% of all whisky sales. Aren’t they an irritation?
Unfortunately, as yet, the industry fails to generate that all important purchase by the consumer. Despite very positive support from the trade and press writers, I wonder why are we not getting the sales that we could expect?
Are we creating an elitism about single malts that is putting potential entrants off? Or have we got the prices so high that so few people are prepared to take the step of paying £25-30 for a bottle? That’s a of a lot of money to ask a new consumer to pay to experiment, and it’s unfortunate that the tax element in that price accounts for some 67% of the total cost.

LFW: Could it be that people think they don’t like whisky?
Well, quite often they don’t the first time they drink it! But malts do come into their own and there is a malt to suit every taste. Someone who is new to whisky when faced with a Laphroaig may say “But this isn’t whisky! This is something else. Where have you been all my life?” Or equally they may say “Wow! Are you truthfully trying to sell this stuff?!”

LFW: How much do you talk to your competitors?
Well, we have that strange contrast in this industry in that we work very closely in primary production but once in the market place, we fight like hell!

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THE INDEPENDENT
Extract from SWR4 Interview with Mr. George Urquhart during Autumn 1995 at which time he was Chairman of Gordon & MacPhail.

LFW: So you started on the bottling line; any recollections?
At that time we used to have lovely spring water in Elgin. It came from Kellas and the Black Hills . Lovely water, untreated and pure. These days we have to purify the water before use but back then we could use it straight for reducing the whisky to normal strength without any further treatment.
I particularly recall we had a water- powered lift to move casks throughout the four-storey building which was driven by the available mains water pressure, no pumps at all. It was amazing, this rickety old thing, but it worked! They had them in Glasgow stores and I was amazed with the speed of those lifts, they were so fast! We still had to move 1/2 ton casks down some stone steps to the cellar—that was hard work—and dangerous! Wearing a jute sack as an apron to protect our clothes, we stood in front of the barrel and carefully slid it down a pair of skids. Beer casks we could bounce onto a mat but not whisky!
Filtration was done by gravity using a big round filter on which you had to make a porridge-like filter bed, mixing the filter pulp with the whisky and letting it settle before turning on the flow of whisky. Once you had started you couldn’t stop otherwise the filter bed would lift and you would have to run the whole lot through again. Done correctly you could get the whisky really sparkling!

LFW: Do you still buy mature whisky?
Whisky is produced by the distillery under contract to us and it is filled into our own casks. We mature it, either in our own warehouses in Elgin or at the distillery where it was produced.

LFW: You must be a leading expert on casks.
The suitability of oak for making strong casks varies from country to country. The best oak for whisky was memel oak from Poland but that wood was all cut down during the First World War. You could use those casks for 100 years, they were so strong with great thick staves. If they are too thin you get a whole lot of staves just cracking.
I remember I once bought a big batch of casks that came from Algiers that had been used by the French people producing wine in north Africa and those staves were very strong! They didn’t crack, they were great thick staves, wonderful. We used them to mature grain whisky.
Mediterranean oak is not very straight grained wood, and the staves are inclined to crack. French oak is not too bad, you can get some quite good cognac casks but that’s not really used. I kept some malt whisky in good quality oak cognac casks as an experiment, with excellent results.
You can produce good whisky out of Portuguese oak but most of the port that comes into the country is in chestnut and only occasionally oak. We also matured some whisky in oak Port Pipes with very good results. They’re an unwieldy cask! They’re long with quite a curvature on them and can hold 120 gallons!
Nowadays we have casks made and seasoned for us in Spain. We’re able to specify stave length, thickness of wood, everything.

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THE PROFESSOR
Extract from SWR5 Interview with Professor Ronnie Martin O.B.E. during Spring 1996 just after the launch of the Loch Fyne which he had created.

LFW: How do you create a blend?
It’s not a science, it’s your own nose and palate that decides what’s right in the end.
A well known character in the industry says that to make up a blend there can be no one single whisky predominating, and I agree, it’s a good starting-off point. There’s an strong argument for having a good spread of malts, it can’t be done with just a few.
The rest is trial and error. The “Pope’s telephone number” — VAT 69 — was created when William Sanderson made up 100 vattings and chose which one he and his chums liked best. I think he was quite right to do that. The blender for VAT 69 used to halve hogsheads. He’d make up a 20,000 gallon vat and actually split a hoggie of one malt to get the ratio right.
To create a blend decide on your first highlands, your second highlands, third highlands, then lowlands and Islays—but be careful with the Islays. We do a practical at the University in which we give my students a vatted malt, a vatted grain and some Islay whiskies and it can be very quickly demonstrated that you can kill a blend dead with too much Islay. There are a lot of blends without any Islay malt. Keep the Islays under control.
Next decide how much malt and how much grain.
Then wood selection, the type of cask— Sherry, bourbon, new, refilled, refilled wine treated, de-charred, re-charred, there are many categories and the permutations are almost endless.
Then how old? There has been an argument for some time between the non-aged deluxe and the 12 year olds. The virtue of having no age on the label is that you can put a wee bit of youth in to ginger it up a bit rather than just having it all 12 years and over.
Our whisky is a ‘standard’, as opposed to a secondary or deluxe. The youngest is five years and the oldest is over ten with a spectrum of age, a good scatter across the range. I believe this range of ages give us a top quality product, particularly when compared with other standard brands.
Finally we put much reliance on a good dollop of top dressing; it brings the whole thing up. I consider this critical and I’m very pleased with mine. The quality of this top dressing is an important factor in the creation of The Loch Fyne, giving you a unique whisky.

LFW: How did you get to be so concerned about quality?
I was Chairman of the Scotch Whisky Definition Committee, which produced the Scotch Whisky Act. The 1990 Act enlarged on the original definition of Scotch which was that it had to be produced in Scotland, matured in wood for three years and contain malted barley.
There were three things that I was very keen to make sure were included. One was the minimum strength of 40% alcohol by volume, (there was a very strong lobby from the marketing side at the time for 37.5% as other spirits were all 37.5%). With the help of the DCL/UD research facility at Glenochil we were able to show, (with easy to understand coloured graphs!), the enormity of the fall-off of the flavour giving congeners between 40% and 37.5%. A lot of flavor congeners are flung out at 37.5%. It really is quite extraordinary that our forefathers, without the aid of high pressure liquid chromatographs and other gadgetry, knew what was absolutely right, quite often as well. At levels of below 40% you lose a lot of character.
I was also very keen that the enzymes for producing the sugars for fermentation should be purely and simply from malted barley and not from any other source as can be done with other types of whiskey. Scotch Whisky is a noble spirit and it should be made purely. For the same reason we fought for the use of whole grains only, otherwise a large proportion of Scotch Whisky could have been made from the by-products of a cereal factory! There was considerable opposition to that.

LFW: If you were allowed one whisky on your desert island...
One whisky? It would be a blend.

LFW: Why a blend?
It’s difficult to describe. Consider the congeners; there are many more in malt than grain. In a blend you’re cutting the congener levels by the addition of grain. If you are a serious whisky drinker, then you are a blend man. Talk to anyone in the trade and I think you will find a preference for blends. A malt is fine but I enjoy a blend. It goes down easier!
I’d take my own blend or Black Label. A lot is to do with what you’ve drunk in the past and I know what goes into it and how much care has gone into it.

I suppose I should say The Loch Fyne, that would do just fine!

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THE POUNDS, DOLLARS & YEN
Extract from SWR6 Interview with Alan Gray during Autumn 1996 at which time he was Investment Analyst of stockbrokers Sutherlands Ltd, of Edinburgh.

LFW: How important is Scotch?
It is one of the UK’s top five exports, along with the likes of ‘Finance’, ‘Engineering’, the ‘Motor Industry’ and North Sea Oil. Whisky exports are now running at well over £2,000 million every year. In addition, almost half that is raised as excise duty and VAT, making it a major contributor to the UK Exchequer.
In terms of employment, the number directly involved is now below 14,000, with another forty-odd thousand indirectly involved, making some 60,000 dependent on the industry. A big employer in Scotland and particularly significant in small communities, a distillery may employ only a dozen people but keep a community vibrant.

LFW: Is Scotch a good investment?
The Scotch Whisky sector has been friendless from an investment point of view for the last few years. This is partly because prices have not been rising and neither have profits. Whisky companies have not therefore been a particularly good investment of late, albeit many are very good companies. That should change but is unlikely to do so in the short term as the market generally is near a peak.
Glenmorangie has, however, performed well and many other companies are now getting into an attractive buying range. Of the big boys, Guinness, Allied and Grand Metropolitan have had a very disappointing share price performance over the last five years. Allied has under-performed the stock market by 50%, Guinness by 44% and GrandMet by 26%. The reason for this is mainly due to the weakness of selling prices; for every one percent increase in price there is a tremendous boost to profit. In the past whisky has had constantly rising prices and therefore profits, in many cases ahead of other industries, but in the last few years that has not been the case. While volumes have been reasonably good, the absence of price increases has mitigated against the whole industry.
Prices have not even risen in line with inflation, partly due to recession but more particularly because the industry has been needlessly competitive virtually cutting each others throat and in many cases has shot itself in the foot. I don’t believe that prices need to be as keen as they are. Furthermore I can’t think of any other industry that cuts prices in the run up to its busy Christmas and New Year season. It’s beyond belief!

LFW: Is overseas ownership a bad thing?
The reality is that there is less foreign ownership than twenty or thirty years ago when the main ownership was American. Now 70% of the industry is UK owned. Most people believe that foreign ownership is much higher than it is. At the moment overseas control is exercised by Seagram(Canada), Pernod (France), Suntory (Japan) and American Brands (Whyte & Mackay/Invergordon). I don’t think that an element of foreign ownership is a bad thing.
What is bad and makes me extremely sad is that so many malt distilleries have been closed. Consider the interest in the industry and the number of tourists that want to come and see distilleries. Also consider the use in blends where 25 or 30 individual malts are employed. It’s becoming more difficult to produce a distinctive blend; they are in danger of becoming too similar. There were 125 distilleries in operation 15 years ago, now there are 85. In my view we have got to a level which should not be reduced any further.
I believe that the Tourist and Whisky industries should work together promoting them for their mutual benefit. The opening up of visitor centres is a fairly new phenomenon; thirty years ago there were none now there are many. Glenturret had over 225,000 visitors last year—staggering! Glenfiddich and Glenfarclas also have big numbers; even Bowmore has attracted 10,000, on an island with a population of 3,500! A lot can be done.

LFW: Any share tips?
Long term Guinness and GrandMet look attractive, as do Highland and Glenmorangie, but there is little to go for in the short term, no quick “punts”!

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THE ALL-ROUNDER
Extract from SWR7 Interview with John Grant during Spring 1997 at which time he was Managing director of J&G Grant, owners of Glenfarclas Distillery.

LFW: You’re a direct descendant of the founder?
Yes. We bought the farm of Rechlerich in 1865. The family had been farming in Blairfindy behind Glenlivet since the 1600’s and this was bought as a place to rest stock and fatten them before going onto market. Rechlerich had a distillery in the corner of a field and for five years the founder of Glenfarclas put his son here to farm. The distillery was a sideline and subcontracted to John Smith who in 1870 went onto build Cragganmore.
There was a fairly nomadic population from the factories of the industrial revolution, who came to work on the land from sowing time to harvest and then return south. After the harvest, if you had a wee distillery in the corner of a field, which is what this was, you could keep one or two good people on full time. It was a hobby until 1896 when the whole place was rebuilt. After that we were more interested in distilling than farming.
Even now there’s no great spread of relatives involved in the company. In the old days of death duties and inheritance tax it was better to be more devolved but now there is only a handful, my two sisters, two cousins and my son who is 20 years old. That’s it. There are only three Directors, myself, Father who is Chairman and an accountant friend in Glasgow, so board meetings are less formal. I have been accused of running a dictatorship, up to a point true, but it means we can be flexible with instant decisions!
I started here before I left school; I spent the summertime taking people round or painting or whatever. After school I spent three years with the Bank of Scotland and three with Wm. Teacher & Sons, who were a family business in those days. I came back here in 1974 and shortly after Father went onto a three-day week!
I spent the first eight months just looking at what we did. I thought there’s no point in upsetting the Distillery Manager as he was doing a good job doubling the capacity of the distillery without losing a day’s production. I suggested to father that I should travel around the world for three months and meet all these people that were selling Glenfarclas for us. I couldn’t find any records of the last visits and was informed that usually they came to us! During my travels everyone was amazed that someone had come out to see them! We took the decision that our future lay in bottled sales, particularly with the excess capacity we’d just built in.
Until the early 1970s, the distillery ran flat out producing ‘fillings’ for blenders to mature. In those days we didn’t have all this haggling over pennies—the price was set after the ‘pot still meeting’—all the maltsters would turn up and prices were agreed so you had a price list for the following season. You then had this wonderful job of allocating production instead of having to go out and sell it.

LFW: Does a reduced number of whisky companies mean a reduced demand for your fillings?
Fewer customers—bigger orders! I think not being part of a big group is an advantage; we’re not directly competing with our customers. Agreed we sell a few bottles of malt but that’s not upsetting them—it’s a niche market. Luckily what we make is the best and the blenders like to have it in their blend and long may it continue.
We’ve bottled Glenfarclas since the 1870s but then only as a hobby, most important was producing fillings.
Now bottle sales are very significant to us and the percentage that we keep for ourselves has increased but the day we keep all of our production for ourselves won’t happen in my lifetime.

LFW: You were the very first to produce a cask strength bottling.
That was in 1968. We thought it would be something different for Christmas presents to bottle one cask at strength and see what reaction there would be. So we selected a sherry hoggie and bottled it, using its actual strength, 105¡ proof; the standard Glenfarclas was 70¡.
We got 27 cases out of it and I don’t know how much we gave away that Christmas but by January we started getting calls asking where it could be bought. That was the birth of ‘105’.
We never spent anything advertising or marketing it and it was unique. I’m very proud of it.
What really put the fly in the ointment was when we went metric! Dear 105¡ had to go and it became 60% volume. Sales plummeted so we decided to give it its own identity as we were up to a few thousand cases, so we registered the brand name Glenfarclas ‘105’.
I see a blender has brought out a 105 blend for the duty free market but it is 105¡ American proof which is 52.5% vol. That’s annoying, imitation is a form of flattery, but if you’re putting out a 105, why American proof? We’ve never used the American system in this country. It’s not doing me any good either.

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THE LOBBYIST
Extract from SWR8 Interview with Hugh Morrison during Autumn 1997 at which time he was Director General of the Scotch Whisky Association.

LFW: What is your job?
I am Director General of the Scotch Whisky Association and have been for four years. Prior to that I was a civil servant with the Scottish Office working in international trade, inward investment, economic development and regional policy—all highly relevant to my current position with the SWA. This background is useful given that much of my work involves discussion with governments and officials.

LFW: Tell us about the Association.
The Association was formed in 1917 as The Whisky Association based in London with branches in Scotland and Ireland. In 1943 it became the Scotch Whisky Association.
The SWA is the trade association which represents 95% of Scotch Whisky producers, wholesalers and brokers. We have 66 members, representing 26 corporate entities.
A levy is raised from members, calculated according to size and turnover so the big boys pay more than the small. We have a Council with 18 members. At the AGM it is one member one vote but I’ve never seen a vote required.
I have a staff of 36 in Edinburgh and 2 in the London office which is used as an address and meeting place.

LFW: What is the role of the Association?
Our stated aim is ‘to promote and protect the interests of the Scotch Whisky Industry’. We have a varied range of things to do; we promote Scotch as the highest quality spirit and protect its quality image, and collect and present industry statistics. As part of image protection, just recently we mounted a campaign to warn the public of the dangers of buying casks of whisky as investments from unscrupulous traders. We also advised the authorities of this activity and such traders have been deterred from continuing.
Because the industry exports to 206 countries there is a large international dimension to our work.
Our top priority is the protection of Scotch Whisky, its geographical origin and name. Anywhere in the world you will find products which are packaged to look like Scotch but which are not. If we became like “cheddar” cheese and you could make “Scotch” anywhere the industry would be in very real difficulties. We use the laws of the countries to protect what are in fact our intellectual property rights.

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DISTILLED OVER 50 YEARS
Extract from SWR9 Interview with John McDonald during Spring 1998 at which time he was Managing Director of Tomatin Distillery.

LFW: How is ‘Tomatin’ properly pronounced?
It rhymes with satin, Tom-atin.

LFW: Have you been here long?
My father came to Tomatin as brewer in 1937. My grandfather and my great grandfather were also distillers. For some strange reason my son is not a distiller, he studied geography.
Father became the manager shortly after I started working here in October 1945 which was for one of the first distillations to take place after the war. Production was restricted in those days: the amount of barley that we could make into malt was governed by a quota based on the distillery’s output in 1939 and 1940. The last whisky made during the war was in 1942: after that all the grain was used for food. After the war you didn’t have to sell whisky—people came to you, they wanted whisky.
The quota system was lifted two or three years later, at which time everybody went flat out to make as much whisky as possible because stocks were so depleted. All distilleries did the same and expanded. We doubled our output from two stills to four stills and so it went on until 1974, by which time we had twenty three stills.
When I started, Tomatin Distillery was a private company of a consortium of London businessmen up until 1958 when it went public. Once public, we proceeded merrily on our way but we started to hit trouble in the 1980’s and went into liquidation in 1985. In March 1986 the Japanese companies Takara Shuzo Co. and Okura & Co. bought the company and they still own it to this day.

LFW: What was the cause of the problem?
Too much stock. We were locked in a buy-back situation, that is that we would make whisky for investors, banks or pension funds with a guaranteed buy-back price of not less than their investment. Soon the buy-back price was much higher than the market value which dropped dramatically. So the company just kept losing money, and in the end the bank and our major shareholders said ‘enough is enough’ and the liquidators sought a new owner. We were resurrected by our current owners in March 1986 and since then we have gone from strength to strength.

LFW: How do you get on with your owners?
Very well. They don’t interfere with us in any way about the running of the company. I see my Chairman only about twice a year and all the other Directors are Japanese apart from myself and Jim Milne, who joined us recently. The Chairman comes over with proxies from the others, so our AGM takes about an hour. He only stays two days, or three if he is going to play golf! He will then return for another visit in October each year. Nice people, no problems—they are happy and we are happy. The last twelve years have been good.
Our owners are not involved in distilling but they are one of the largest suppliers of shochu in Japan, but not a producer. The company is pretty big with 2,200 employees. In 1968 they became Tomatin’s distributors in Japan, so they knew about Tomatin and I knew many of them from their visits to the distillery. They decided to purchase a distillery, I think one of the reasons being that Suntory had a 26% stake in Macallan, and now own Morrison Bowmore, and so they bought Tomatin. After that the other big whisky company, Nikka, bought Ben Nevis Distillery.
With the liquidation, the head office in London was closed and the liquidator asked me to run the company. I had been just the Production Director, but as I had nothing else to do, I just did it, and with a certain degree of success, even if I say so myself.

LFW: Tell us about the MDAS.
I recently stepped down from being President of the Malt Distillers Association of Scotland. This is the organisation that deals with the sharp end of any production problems that the industry has. Environmental issues take up a lot of time, especially dealing with the rubbish that emanates from Brussels. Health and Safety is important and there are committees for animal feed products, Customs & Excise, wages—it is a good organisation.
It’s the practical association for whisky production, and is well run by the secretaries in Elgin. There are lots of meetings and plenty of discussion. By far the most active committee is Environment which tackles European Community legislation bumph and tries to conform. Some of the stuff is unnecessary, water temperature elevation for example—because we discharge water warmer than the original it’s considered bad for fish but for over 100 years the Spey has attracted the best fish!
We always conform, we can’t change it. But we get a lot of aggravation. The association has done a lot recently regarding removal of copper from distillery effluent; it’s not legislated for at the moment but we have to be prepared. Our rivers are clean, probably the cleanest in the world. Have you seen the ‘Blue Danube? It’s brown!
The Secretary of the Malt Distillers goes to the operations meetings of the Scotch Whisky Association. The SWA and MDAS are two separate bodies, we are at the sharp end. I was delighted to be President, a great moment both for Tomatin and also for my own personal satisfaction, the pinnacle of my career.

LFW: How do you view the whisky industry now?
I’m concerned about number of people who come into the industry in very high positions and then leave after just two or three years.
The (SWA) Director General’s job is hard because he has more changes in his team than any football manager. Ever changing personnel is never good and there are many people coming in with no knowledge of the whisky industry. You are not going to learn much in two years and it is bad for the people down the ladder who always have to educate new people, people who are their bosses!

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THE COMPANY
Extract from SWR10 Interview with the chairman & board of Inver House Distillers during Autumn 1998.

LFW: What attracted you to buy the business?
The potential. It was pretty run down but we saw a future in production and in marketing. It is easier for a small private company with long term interests in the trade to bring it back rather than a public company answerable to dividend driven shareholders. We can consider opportunities as and when they come round, making quick decisions.

LFW: A courageous decision though.
For our four families, yes. The industry in general was at a fairly low ebb but we reckoned that we were in time to see it turn round. With the assistance of our banks we raised £8.2m. For that we got the warehousing complex and stocks of maturing whisky. There was no primary production save for the cream and gin plants and our business initially was the provision of warehousing facilities for the trade and the creation of our blends.
Our intention was to become a quality producer seeking opportunities on the marketing side. The brands we acquired at the time of the buy-out and subsequently have done well, in particular Hankey Bannister, Heather Cream, Speyburn and recently Pulteney. However we knew that unless we were a primary producer there was no way that the industry would take us seriously. We had to be Distillers and before the end of our first year we bought Knockdhu Distillery from United Distillers.
Our distillery, tied in with the quality of our blends and the fact that we were independent, opened more doors for us. Whisky people were prepared to talk to and deal with us. There was more continuity about the company rather than the transient approach of Publicker.

LFW: Now you have five distilleries.
Knockdhu was the first in 1988 and since 1992 we have bought Speyburn from UD, Pulteney and Balblair from Allied Distillers and last year, our new flagship, Balmenach from UD. All Highland distilleries producing highly respected spirit. Balmenach is our biggest, but we can still only achieve with all our distilleries what some others can do with just one.
Our main asset is the five different characters produced by those distilleries and we will soon benefit from the five single malt products, because these are quality distilleries with quality products.
One attraction of a distillery is the ability to trade its product with other distillers in order to produce the variety of blends in the market place. 90% of the industry’s trade is blended whiskies and as both malt distillers and blenders we can bring in a substantial number of other distillers’ products to complement our own blend recipes. This is a reciprocal trade rather than one involving cash and is common within the Scotch whisky industry.
We have not bought our distilleries in a speculative manner, for production and subsequent open market sale. The distilleries enable us to make savings in what we would otherwise have to buy to make our blends. That is the value of distillery ownership; the savings rather than the revenue. We could have bought several other distilleries that were available, but we wanted to be sure that we were producing products that not only were we able to use ourselves but are sought after by others in the trade, including the previous owners, for use in their blends. According to some of the older classifications, all our distilleries are firsts or seconds, with Balmenach being the most highly regarded.

LFW: Any more advice?
Re-invest everything, put everything back. You will not be taken seriously in this industry unless you have quality distillation. Without that we would never have achieved what we have achieved so far.
We are a slim company of just 130 people with over half in production and warehousing, the rest in administration and international sales. Our Finance Director joined the board in 1995 perhaps reflecting recognition that four production men alone is not necessarily all good.

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THE ALCHEMIST
Extract from SWR11 Interview with Dr Bill Lumsden during Spring 1999 at which time he was head of distilleries and Maturation at Glenmorangie plc.

LFW: Why do you think Glenmorangie does so well?
Firstly, along with a couple of other brands, it was first marketed in the ’70s, a time when single malt sales were about to take off. The trail was blazed by Glenfiddich but we were close behind.
More important now is that it is such a terrific whisky! Although it is very complex and delicate, the bourbon cask maturation and the fruitiness gives it a light sweetness that makes it very easy to drink. A lot of the many nuances will only be found by the more seasoned whisky drinkers.
Every malt whisky has its own unique character and I feel that there are three reasons why Glenmorangie is unique. The water source is uniquely hard; it rises through layers of limestone and sandstone and is collected in an area known as ‘Tarlogie Springs’ which is the size of a small swimming pool. As a scientist, I can’t tell you why this hardness is significant. I know that Calcium salts help stabilise enzyme complexes during the initial mashing stage. From that we might expect a higher yield of spirit, but we don’t. You do need a pure, uncontaminated source of water and ours is also unusually hard but it is difficult to quantify the effect.
A greater influence is that we have the tallest stills of any malt whisky distillery in Scotland. When the distillery was established in 1843, Mr Matheson, being a canny Scot, acquired second-hand gin stills from London. They had a characteristic tall shape designed to give a highly rectified spirit (very tall necks give a much higher degree of reflux so that heavier or oilier elements do not make it over into the distillate). This gives a lighter, sweeter and fruitier result which is the house style of Glenmorangie; other distillers new-make tends to be heavier and oilier.
The other great influence is the type of wood we use for maturation. For many years we have been very active in choosing the type of wood we use, all ex-Bourbon and only first or second fill for single malt production, which is almost unique in the industry. The wood comes from an area in the States and is harvested to our specification, air seasoned (not kiln dried), made into hogsheads and then leased out to a Bourbon company for four years. That wood has a unique effect on the whisky and helps us maintain consistency.

LFW: Is the type of Bourbon used relevant?
I would say not. I think that as long as it had Bourbon in it to remove some of the undesirable elements, it doesn’t matter; the Bourbon conditions the wood rather than contributes to it. Our ‘designer’ hogsheads are leased out to Heaven Hill distillery and matured in unheated warehouses and that also has an impact on the wood; the majority of American whiskey is matured in heated warehouses in order to bring about a more rapid development of the product.

LFW: So you don’t use any sherry- wood at all?
In the case of the 18yo we do use some sherry. The extra six years gives a real nuttiness and a light spiciness. About one third of the maturing whisky is transferred into sherry wood for a number of years and this adds a slight sweetness, a nice delicate raisin and caramel note which adds to the overall complexity of the malt. There is no fixed formula but the amount of sherry maturation going into the bottle is only a small portion.
Bourbon gently seasons the wood, it removes the elements we don’t want and doesn’t mask our unique distillery character. If we take our very floral, fragrant, delicate, new make spirit and put it into a sherry cask that sherry will dominate very quickly, and so the concept of ‘wood finishing’ which we developed a couple of years ago.

LFW: Wood finishing?
‘Finishing’ was the vision of our previous Managing Director Neil McKerrow. A series of experiments was set up in the ’80s. New whisky was put into port pipes and Madeira drums but very quickly we realised that new make into these casks was not right. Like with sherry, the wine notes were dominating the whisky and so the concept of ‘finishing’ was developed whereby already mature whisky is transferred into the wine casks for a limited period of time.
The wine-seasoned casks expand the range of flavours and aroma, adding considerably to the whisky and offering something quite different, particularly for after-dinner drams. It helps to woo new drinkers to the category and to the brand without losing the essential qualities which are uniquely Glenmorangie.
We have three core wood finishes: port is the most successful—dangerously drinkable, Madeira—my favourite and sherry. We also produce what I call ‘guest finishes’, like guest ales in a pub, and last year we brought out a claret-wood finish (actually a top Chateau premier cru from the Paullac Region). Before that we used Tain l’Hermitage casks from Cotes du Rhone (‘Tain’ being both the village in Hermitage and our home in Ross-shire) and at present we have a fino sherry finish. I have been very active buying various types of wood out on the market and we have one or two nice bits and pieces being developed so you will see more things coming through soon. I have stocks of casks from lesser known fortified wines and various red wines, many very rare and outrageously expensive.
We are currently developing an area here at Broxburn to be called the finishing area where the vast majority of our port, Madeira and sherry casks will be kept and we will also have examples of all our different and experimental types of cask.
You can expect to see a guest finish on the market about once a year; any more would be over-saturation.

LFW: How long does a finish take?
For our Glenmorangie finishes all are currently transferred at twelve years for finishing but the duration of finishing depends on the development of the whisky in each particular cask because the wines and casks vary so much. This is where the skill and dedication of my sampling and tasting team comes in—it’s very arduous work!
Port wood varies a lot. Sometimes we find a very active cask can develop in as little as six months but the average is 12 to 18 months.
We have just launched Glen Moray finished (or ‘mellowed’) in white wine casks and we have been very surprised by the rapidity with which the product reached the desired specification. In this case we were starting to get to where we wanted to within six months.

LFW: How many fills do you get from a cask?
For the port, sherry and Madeira we get one fill and that’s it, we can’t use them again and I then sell the old casks. They are very expensive casks and there are potential savings to be made by refilling with wine to revitalise them but it is not our practice at the moment; as a whisky purist I am uneasy about going down that route. In the case of the Glen Moray and the white wines we are investigating to see if we can get a second fill because of the speed with which we can attain our finish.

LFW: How ‘empty’ are these casks before you start?
My requirement is that the cask must not have been sitting around and be all dried out. Ideally the wine is emptied out completely, the cask resealed and shipped to Scotland within a couple of weeks. Most arrive dry but they do have a lining of crystals of tartrate and such like. The fortified wine casks are dry to moist but none of our casks has any lees swilling about in it. If that was the case you could ask if the flavour was coming from that but there must be some wood maturation for success. Any wine in the cask would be strictly against the law and the rules of the Scotch Whisky Association as it would potentially be considered as an additive.

LFW: And so to Ardbeg.
We bought Ardbeg in 1997 and generated a huge amount of positive publicity; people are very happy that the distillery is back in production and now it is being bottled and marketed it has given a boost to the whole category of Islay whisky. We have inherited a challenge in that the distillery did not produce anything between 1981 and 1989 so my job of managing the stocks is a bit of a nightmare!
Initially we brought out a 17yo and vintages from 1978 and then 1975, but it does not take a genius to work out that these bottlings are not sustainable so we are now looking at developing a new core product for the range which will be launched in the Autumn. The brand manager has forbidden me to reveal anything about it, but I can tell you that it was not old enough last year! I have extensively tasted stocks and found them far more interesting than the neighbouring distilleries, even in direct comparison. It is not going to be like the old ten year old bottled by the previous owners, but it will be much more true to the old Ardbeg style than our 17yo is.
We will continue to bottle the 17yo for as long as possible. Stocks are limited but there is enough to support the current demand.
I would warn Ardbeg fans that, like Glenmorangie, Ardbeg is to be kept in-house and you will see fewer independent bottlings. We do trade Ardbeg with the industry but only to satisfy contracts which were previously in existence. Ardbeg is popular with blenders if used judiciously.

LFW: What type of casks are you filling—is there any truth in our Ardbeg herring-barrel finish story?
Not yet! It’s almost all Bourbon being filled, very little sherry wood, as I’m not keen on sherry-matured peaty whiskies. In future we may do something with a different cask but probably not sherry; the Ardbeg style does not involve sherry. As for herring-barrel finish I think there is enough of the smoked fish character there already! Whatever we do do it must be something robust to overcome the phenols, rum perhaps. It will be interesting.

oOo

THE MASTER BLENDER
Extract from SWR12 Interview with Richard Paterson during Autumn 1999 at which time he was Master Blender for JBB (Greater Europe)

LFW: You are not the first Paterson blender.
My father and my grandfather were both whisky blenders. I started with my father when I was very young. I recall that when I was about eight he would ask, what did I think of this whisky? I could smell it on his breath and I wouldn’t think very much of it! So he would whack me on the back of the head and say what do you mean, is it dry or sweet? So it built up from there and gave me a very good foundation, as well as a sore head! My first job was with a small company called A. Gillies and Company (which had Glen Scotia distillery) in Glasgow where I spent my first four years learning every aspect relating to production, blending and bottling. Being the son of the great ‘Gus’ Paterson of WR Paterson Ltd and Stockwell Bond caused considerable difficulties for me so I was determined to broaden my horizons and I studied with the Wines and Spirits Education Trust for three years.
My first job as a blender was in 1970 here with Whyte & Mackay and I became their Master Blender when I was twenty six, the youngest in Scotland, I believe.
Now Whyte & Mackay has been my life-blood for thirty years.
My grandfather— the old sod—William, started W R Paterson in the thirties, (please don’t confuse with Pattison’s of Leith). Originally grandfather supplied coal to distilleries up north but when the coal trade started to decline he thought whisky appeared to be making more money so he moved into distilling, blending and bottling. Eventually he bought the Stockwell Bond which was a great old building, sadly now the site of the St Enoch shopping centre in Glasgow. I remember vividly as a small boy visiting it for the first time, all dark with a great smell and the noise of the bottling hall. It’s true, they were good old days!

LFW: Are blenders born or created?
A bit of both, but what is required is total and utter commitment; 100% dedication, passion, and pursuit of the highest quality. And time. Whiskies are like people; you get to understand them better as you get older.
The greatest thrill I think is when I produce something that I think is right but is then endorsed by the customer or gets an award.

LFW: How is Whyte & Mackay so often cheaper than its main competitors.
Listen! What more can you want? This is an extremely high quality whisky which is one of the most expensive whiskies to produce, including the double maturation and which we make available to the consumer at an attractive price!

LFW: What is your policy on your single malt bottlings?
For the standard bottlings where consistency is essential such as with Jura 10 or Dalmore 12 years, I like to allocate as many casks as possible, up to 150 to 200 at one time, drawing from various positions throughout the warehouse, which I believe has some considerable effect on the whisky character. To overcome this and to bring uniformity we do large vattings which will encompass all these subtle variations and give us the desired style we seek.
In the case of Dalmore 12yo, 30% is oloroso sherry wood and the rest is ex American bourbon. The Cigar malt which we produce for America is Dalmore with a 60% oloroso. That was released two or three years ago as a complement for those who want a cigar with a malt. America is where Dalmore’s great success lies.
Jura has a style of its own and it performs better with ex bourbon. We have done tests with sherries which have worked relatively well but we still find that good old American white oak suits it. We are also looking at peating levels; we are in no hurry to change the present style in any way, but we are always reviewing options.
When it comes to the Stillman’s Drams, the 25 to 30yos, it is entirely different. These are personally selected at rare ages that reflect the true character of each malt. Just recently I selected a 30 yo Dalmore which is unbelievable. If you compare that with the one from 18 months ago there is a significant difference. This one is superb; for the last nine years I had transferred it to an oloroso butt that previously had held some 50 year old Dalmore, which made it exceptionally rich and very complex. I try not to worry about variations in limited products; the style and character changes are subtle and depend on actual wood use.
With these fine, big whiskies I recommend that you savour it; sip it and combine it with Colombian coffee and high cocoa fat chocolate, the combination will highlight the taste. And remember if it is matured for thirty years then give it as many seconds in the mouth.

LFW: You have a fine collection of W&M bottles dating back 150 years; what changes could we identify over the years?
During the early years, especially the 1890s, Whyte & Mackay were using a high proportion of Campbeltown malts, (not surprising with there being so many)— and even the age was about 8 years—with the result you can expect the overtones to be big and heavy in body compared with today’s more mellow flavour.
It is a shame that in 1887 Barnard wrote about 129 Scotch Whisky distilleries but he never referred to the taste of the whisky! It wasn’t until Wallace Milroy’s Almanac in 1984 that consumers have had the chance to acquire a taste and love of malts, yet we have produced it since 1494. I wonder why we kept this so quiet?

LFW: Will the character have changed in the bottle?
If you open a bottle that is fifty or sixty years old, you find that the whisky is stuffed, numb and closed—it needs air. Swirl it in the glass for five minutes and it will recover. If it has been lying on its side against the cork, sadly that will have an unwanted effect as years ago corks were very heavy and can give quite a flavour.
Once any bottle is opened, please finish it! Keep it at an even temperature—not in the sun or an illuminated cabinet—and a good strong seal is important for keeping the character. But if you have something good then for goodness sake drink it! Once I get to a quarter full, I think that is an awful lot of air and this bottle should be finished soon. Certainly I think it should be within a year.