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DEVIL'S ADVOCATE
SPOILED BY CHOICE? Many years ago I took one of my cooperage managers with me on a visit to Louisville, Kentucky. My travelling companion was on his maiden visit to the States. He was therefore unprepared for the quick-fire breakfast question and answer session. After the pleasantries—“Good mornin’ y’all”—he was asked what he would like for breakfast. Orange juice, bacon and eggs, toast and coffee was his choice. Reasonable enough one would think—wrong! Pre-squeezed or freshly squeezed? American bacon or Canadian bacon? Eggs: boiled, poached, scrambled or fried? Fried?—Over easy or sunnyside up? Toast: rye, wheatgerm, white or brown bread? If brown, wholegrain or plain? Coffee: regular or decaf? Black or white? With cream, milk or whitener? With sugar or sweetener?—Brown, white or granules? Then just in case he wasn’t confused enough… “how’s about grits and hash browns?” My companion looked at me, rolled his eyes, and said “Great country this!” The reason for our visit—other than the Great American Breakfast experience—was to fix up and check up on our supply of bourbon casks. As every reader is probably aware, Bourbon can only use a barrel once and since we Scots are allegedly tight-fisted we have, as an industry, traditionally purchased the used bourbon barrels from the States. By the same token, our industry forebears were quick to acquire sherry casks from the British sherry importers—again used casks that we could make good use of. On a lesser scale distillers would pick up odd parcels of rum casks or port pipes for filling at distilleries with new make spirit. When the sherry importers spurned wood in favour of steel bulk containers, the Whisky Industry laid casks down in Spain for ‘treatment’. You see by this time we had ‘built- in’ a sherry characteristic within our various brands and wished to maintain that which we had. Some producers only sent bourbon casks to grain distilleries, others filled them with malt whisky; sherry casks went to malt distilleries, port likewise, rum went to grain. All of these ‘imports’ however only made up a relatively small percentage each year of the casks that were filled at distilleries. The vast majority of casks filled were known as ‘refill’. In other words they had previously held whisky, had been emptied following maturation, repaired where necessary, and sent back for refilling to a distillery. The bourbon, sherry, port or rum casks only merited that descriptor for their first filling with whisky—thereafter, on emptying, they would become refill casks. Now you might learn something; new casks produced from ‘virgin’ wood are a bit of a rarity in the Scotch Whisky Industry… not unknown, but rare nevertheless and they have to be handled with care. Not surprisingly, they impart a serious woody overtone to the spirit whilst the amount of spirit soaked into the wood is significantly greater than that from a cask which has previously held spirit. For this reason grain whisky (cheaper to produce than malt whisky) was always used to ‘sweeten’ new casks. You see, we are careful with money! When I started in the industry—the best part of 40 years ago—the inventories were always marked “use judiciously for blending” wherever virgin casks had been filled. If the blender used too many new casks in a blend, the woody overtones could easily overpower his—or her—creation. This has been a long preamble… just bear with me and I promise I’ll get to the point. What I have described is the traditional ageing process: casks sent to a distillery, filled with spirit, left to mature in the warehouse. When the cask is emptied—either as part of a blend or as a single malt—the spirit has been influenced by the wood in which it has matured. Our forefathers discovered—arguably by accident—that sherry casks gave an added characteristic to malt whisky; bourbon casks passed on an inherent sweetness to Scotch. The percentage of such casks filled each year, however, was modest. Remember refill casks? Nevertheless, certain companies majored on specific taste characteristics coming from the wood—at the expense perhaps of the distillery itself. Macallan is a great malt distillery. It’s been a recognized ‘1st Class Malt’ on any classification list since time began. But how many Macallan consumers have ever tasted ‘pure’ Macallan as distinct from the ‘sherry-flavoured wood extract’ Macallan on which the brand has been built? This tale now moves on apace! Other producers… or more accurately the marketeers (there, I got them in eventually!)… jealous perhaps of Macallan’s success, looked for new ways of differentiating their own product. As in all things marketing, time is of the essence! This is probably because in this Industry the marketers are somewhat transient by nature. Very few are going to be around in 10 or 12 months (let alone years) to see this year’s filling come out of the warehouse following maturation. So why don’t we speed up the process? Let’s take whisky which is already in the warehouse and subject it to a ‘quick-fix’ in a different type of cask. The unromantic production term for this is ‘back end loading’. Marketeers call it ‘finishing’. And boy, have we had a plethora of finishes! Glenmorangie take the first prize. Port, Madeira, Chardonnay—to name but three. Auchentoshan, already a fine triple distilled Lowland malt, suddenly ‘springs’ a triple wood finish! A triple triple so to speak. The Classic Malt Distillers Edition (as distinct from the quite superb original Classic Malt Range) came up with another half dozen finishes. I could go on but you are probably ahead of me by this time. The cynic in me would suggest that apart from salt barrels and herring barrels we’ve back end loaded all we can. Come to think of it with Pulteney described as ‘The Genuine Maritime Malt’ we’ve maybe together sussed out the future back end loading opportunities for that brand! Remember my cooperage manager? We could all be as mentally wrecked as he. “Can I have a Loch Fyne please?” “Would that be original formulation, sir? Or North Sea Oil finish?… Brent or Forties?… Imported steel or genuine Scottish Ravenscraig (now closed and so a hefty premium)?” Maybe we should be producing small bottles of additives to sell with our whiskies; Whisky-fixers™. You, the consumer would have a choice not dissimilar to breakfast in Louisville: “Barman, I’d like a malt whisky—a Glen Whatever—and a fixer-Phial™ of Port and one of Sherry extract”. The future perhaps?… Regrettably an idea that marketeers may steal from us ‘boring’ production types. (Again.) As complacency sets in, the infection has already spread to the blended whisky brands. Grant’s-with-ale and Islay-finished Grouse for God’s sake! We can only be a split-second from Johnnie Walker’s Striding Man donning his athletic support in order to achieve a photo-finish. What are we doing here? Are we being hugely creative in product differentiation and/or market segmentation? Are we playing to the wine snob market? Or giving the whisky writers the chance to indulge themselves? Are we being fair to the distillers’ art? Is what’s coming out after maturation the true taste of the natural product… hand crafted with no artificial ingredients? Or are we being too clever by half in ‘bending’ the whisky definition? Don’t say we’re not cutting edge. And don’t expect me to provide any answers. Hell, I’m The Advocate—I just pose the questions!
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