THE COOPER Our victim this time is Willie Taylor of Speyside and Broxburn Coopers. LFW: What is your job? I am joint managing director of Speyside Cooperage, which is managed by my brother Douglas, and I am production director of Broxburn Coopers located west of Edinburgh. I am also President of the National Federation of Coopers. LFW: Do you handle ‘barrels’ or ‘casks’? A cask can be a barrel, hogshead or butt; a barrel is a specific cask of 200 litres. Our business is the handling of casks, the universal wooden containers. There are cave drawings from Egyptian times depicting casks, the Romans used wood to move their wine, and casks were used as a well liner in Roman settlements in England. Coopering was once one of the largest of all trades; everything used a barrel—it was the best way of moving, dry goods and wet. I recall one elderly lady from England telling me her father made casks for transporting crockery, which is very heavy stuff. Today oak casks are required by the Scotch whisky industry as the only acceptable method of maturation, the removal of foul elements from the new spirit and the addition of pleasing flavour compounds. LFW: How did you get started? My father and grandfather started Speyside Cooperage in 1947. Father joined grandfather’s tailor’s shop in Dufftown after the war and together they went around the area selling army surplus but it came to the point where there was not enough to sustain them. Great-grandfather owned the old stables in Craigellachie which he had been renting out to coopers before the war—who of course never paid the rent. So when after the war they asked back in again father suggested they work for him; he would go out and get the work. They enjoyed reasonable growth in the whisky industry; I recall the sixties as being good. Douglas was keen to get into the trade but I had no such ambitions. After a stretch training in accountancy, I managed a local hotel for my father for eleven years but that’s a thankless job with no time off at all. Eventually I joined Douglas at the cooperage in 1977—hardly a buoyant time, but not too bad. Soon I was delivering casks to the distilleries. One memory is a car in my mirror flashing its lights just before he got showered with casks—I eventually got to learn how to lash them down! I enjoyed the physical work and the shorter day—especially Saturday afternoons free! I loved seeing raw material converted into casks. By 1980 a reduction in work came and it was down to me to do the cost-cutting exercise. By the mid-eighties things started to pick up again, at home and with producers in Japan. We were back into good shape with more people and apprentices; we were bringing in fresh bourbon barrels and converting many into hogsheads by adding additional staves, but we were outgrowing our space. Douglas found out the farm up the road was up for sale and, after much to-ing and fro-ing with the planning people we bought the farm to build a new factory and moved up there. At the old place, because we were on the roadside, a lot of people used to stop and stick their nose in and usually one of the guys would show them round. I remember a film crew came to see us shortly after we had spent a huge amount of money modernising the old site. We were standing at the entrance and one of the film crew came running back saying “You’ve got to see this place! It’s like going back 100 years!”. By the time of the move we were getting a lot of visitors, from the trade and whisky-trailers, and there were more safety aspects to consider. We thought it a good idea to incorporate a visitor centre and now, after ten years, it looks after itself. We have had a peak of 27,000 visitors—close enough to our goal of 30,000 per year—and now we seem to be on a rise again. I’m not sure if we would have a visitor centre if we were doing it all again, but it has helped in so much as we have had to get our act together with regard to health & safety and keeping the place tidier. It was an expensive operation where we had to go the whole hog but it has given us lots of good publicity—not to forget the sales of flower tubs, garden furniture and mini casks! That site is now set up for 20 coopers with as many support staff again. A throughput of 400 casks a day is possible—when distilleries are going full belt—but presently we are at about half that rate. We are putting out as many casks as we were five years ago but much of that is wood redirection—casks we buy from America, check them out, run those that need repairing through the workshop and the better ones are moved straight on. They come in whole, not shook or knocked down into bundles, in containers of 210. Many distillers are taking the opportunity of low prices for bourbon casks and getting their stocks back up. We also make a lot of new cask ends for home and export. LFW: How did you come to expand to Broxburn? We leased the cooperage at Broxburn 8 years ago. It was part of a Bell’s warehousing and bottling plant and was sold by United Distillers to Glenmorangie who let us take on the cooperage. We had been searching for more premises when we realised that the north was being reduced in utilisation—whisky made up north was being tankered away for filling into casks in the central belt. When I moved to Broxburn we had 6 coopers, but within a couple of years that was 18 going flat out for a few years—all relative to the demand of the fillers. At present I have 10 coopers and 8 support staff. LFW: Are you the biggest coopers? The biggest independent cooper, yes, but Diageo is the biggest employer. After years of overproduction there are more dumpings than fillings and so a surplus of freshly dumped, good casks which no one wants. The distillers have the option of paying us to fix a cask or buying one in better condition, at half the price. In times like this the industry can go without a cooper for quite a while—especially with the pressure on distillers to lower costs and do better for their shareholders. I can appreciate where they are coming from. Another result of the 1980s downturn is that blends became made of older whiskies—as a way of using up maturing stock—and now they are filling for eight years rather than three, with the result that we get less work. Palletisation of the grain whiskies has also hit us, as this means the casks do not get the rough handling that they used to get. Pumps fill and empty the spirit through the head of an upended cask which is just sitting on a pallet without any bashing or wear and tear. LFW: Is palletising a good thing for the whisky? Not for me! I not sure about palletising; there certainly is a lot of debate about it. I discussed it in the States and it is interesting to note that they have not adopted it in the bourbon industry. They did large-scale trials—as the Americans do—but they have not gone any further than trials, they’re sticking with traditional warehousing. I suspect that casks being so close together for air circulation is one reason it is questionable; they just don’t get to breathe the same. There is more evaporation too; you are losing from the whole of one end and since the two ends amount to 1/3 of the cask area that much loss of wood contact will diminish maturation. LFW: What is the NFC? I am the president of the National Federation of Coopers; I served on the council for a number of years and as the numbers decreased they ran out of people to appoint! When I first became involved with the Federation it had the main purpose of wage negotiation, a sort of union, but by the time I was on the council everyone had started doing their own deals. Now the NFC primarily manages and looks after apprentices to make sure they are properly trained and that high standards are maintained. We are also involved with H&S issues, drawing what’s required to members’ attention. In 1980 there were over 1,000 coopers but that has now dropped to a little over 200 of which only 140 are active production coopers and that figure is likely to fall again. There has been a big focus on safety issues. The H&S executive love us—they use coopering as a training field for their officers! Very very physical, noisy, dusty, machines, lots of revolving blades, and dangerous substances! In days gone by there was a lot of boozing from wet casks and the old guys would encourage the young with a “you’ve got to drink this, son…” but nowadays fortunately they are not interested in the drink. You have to picture the old guys coopering away with blood pouring down their hands! “Cut the top off your finger? Here have another one, lad!” LFW: So, what does a cooper do? Most of what we do is simply repairing casks, replacing the heads and any broken staves. More heads need replacing as the bourbon industry (because they have to use brand-new casks every time) has tried to control the price of casks so they are as thin as is necessary, the tolerance has been reduced with more defect and sap-wood employed. When such a cask is filled, there is a lot of ingress which makes the wood swell which has to go somewhere causing the head to bow in or out, so most bourbon casks coming in from the States now are needing new heads. We used to be busy enlarging barrels to make ‘hogsheads’, from 200 to 250 litres, by putting in new staves and larger heads but there is not so much of that now. It’s a shame because I think the hogshead gives a really nice whisky; a barrel is much smaller than a hoggie and so much more intense, there is less volume of liquid and a greater relative area of wood. Making new casks is not our main business—just a few hundred a year, but that is increasing because some distillers are charging ahead with organic whisky, which requires supervision and certification from the Organic Society. We use all American oak. In fact most of the oak in the Scotch industry comes from America; it is tighter and better for the job than European. Sherry casks have a fair percentage of Spanish oak but now there is a lot of American oak used in sherry casks too. We import the wood pre-cut to lengths but not fashioned. We have dabbled with Polish oak and we have been involved in making wine casks with some Hungarian oak. Eastern European oak is much more porous, it is harder to get quality oak, harder to work with, there’s more waste and it’s much more expensive. In fact that is the case with all European oak, even French can be difficult and has to be very carefully cut. Distillers can get an ex-bourbon barrel for £25 and French oak wine barrels are changing hands for about £450. In fairness to the distillers they don’t want too much new oak; there are too many tannins released into the first filling; like ex-bourbon there are lots of vanillas but you still have a bitter tannin note. LFW: Will the Americans change the regulations and allow barrels to be reused? They have been discussing it over there, but it would change their product considerably. There are the conservationists and as costs become a greater issue it is possible that they may start refilling a small percentage even. I recall when Early Times bourbon from Louisville—once a big seller in the American home market—changed from bourbon to ‘Early Times Kentucky whisky’ (dropping the bourbon name) sales disappeared! So there is a history that makes it unlikely in my opinion. LFW: What does charring do? Charring caramelises the sugars in the wood; it also helps to filter out many of the impurities in new spirit. There are those that will not consider re-char because they do not want those smoky flavours coming through in their spirit. LFW: Now it is exotic casks. I like the idea of using casks from wines and fortified wines; there are new flavours to be gained from the likes of Malaga and port. Fortified wines were the first to be brought into this country and those casks would have found their way into the scotch industry. When whisky was matured for three years you did not have cooperages making casks; they were just making use of what was available. There were different grades and wood used for the various uses be it fish, butter, beer, wine or spirit. The problem with some woods is the absence of medullary rays which run through the wood and it is very difficult to get a wood that will hold liquid. Chestnut was used as a cheaper option on the continent but I think wine has different properties from spirits; I think spirits in a chestnut cask would not work—most chestnut casks were waxed on the inside anyway. I love wondering what is going to come from a cask, is it going to be sensational or is it going to be ‘flippin’eck, what have I done here!’ One may be exceptional while another makes you wonder what went wrong. LFW: Will we run out of port pipes? There have been a lot removed from service and not just to whisky producers. Like sherry the port producers don’t actually need wood to make their product—not for ruby port anyway, for tawny ports yes, but ruby probably never sees a cask. Some of the distillers want a ruby port because it is giving lots of colour so I have to find someone who is willing to fill specially. So far I have been able to source port pipes but I am hearing that we are not going to get this sort of thing for much longer. LFW: Where does the flavour come from in a finish? Finishing gains flavour from the wine that is saturated into the wood, not the wood itself. There is enough in there that a high strength spirit will absorb, like a solvent cleaning a dirty tin. This is where Glenmorangie have been successful; they are using a high quality matured spirit. Putting a duff spirit into a bourbon wood would help to get some maturation and colour it up but shoving bad into a port or sherry cask to sweeten it up will not work. I’m going to Whitby next week to meet the replica sailing ship Endeavour that has sailed back from Madeira with 10 hogsheads that have held a gorgeous wine. When Glenmorangie heard of this, pressure was brought to bear and they have secured them all, but they have to give me a bottle, that’s a condition! I’m really looking forward to the results. These are casks that we sent out several years ago for a bit of experimentation, a mixture of new, ex-wine and ex-whisky wood. LFW: Desert island dram? That’s a dangerous one; I’d hate to offend any of my customers and we do deal with a large percentage of the industry. However being a Speyside man, a 25 or 30yo Glenfarclas, or any similar dark, well-matured European oak sherry cask whisky. LFW: Thank you. The full text of our discussion, almost twice as long as the above, can be found on the next page