Stillhouse Stories--Tunroom Tales

by Gavin D. Smith

  Douglas opted for a change of career, however, noting that, ‘I went into Bell’s Sports Centre in Perth as a leisure assistant and did football coaching. I’d been doing football refereeing while working at Dewar’s. Jeanette had left Inveralmond to have our first child, just before the place closed.’

  ‘When I retired Jeanette and I went on a Mediterranean cruise and I finally got to see where the casks I’d worked on for so many years actually came from. I then worked in environmental health for Perth and Kinross Council and now I do deliveries for a local pharmacy, as well as playing golf twice a week when I can.’

  As for the bigger picture of Perth’s whisky heritage, the closure of Inveralmond was followed four years later when United Distillers & Vintners, the forerunner of Diageo, closed its Cherrybank offices in Perth, with the loss of more than 100 jobs, which were transferred to Essex. Cherrybank had been the headquarters of Arthur Bell & Sons, which lost its independence in 1985, and the demise of Cherrybank severed a connection been Bell’s and the ‘Fair City’ that had last for more than 150 years.

  ‘Today Famous Grouse at West Kinfauns is the last bastion of the whisky industry in Perth,’ laments Douglas. ‘At one time you had Gloag’s, Bell’s and smaller companies like Currie’s and Thomson, who did the Beneagles ceramic whisky containers, as well as Dewar’s, and now they’re all gone.’

  As always, however, small connections, coincidences and ironies remain. Douglas and Jeanette live in a house owned by The Gannochy Trust; AK Bell, son of Arthur, purchased the Gannochy Estate during the 1920s and proceeded to build ‘model cottages for the deserving poor’ between 1925 and 1932. Bell’s philanthropic activities were formalised into the Gannochy Trust in 1937.

  ‘There are about a hundred aand twenty houses in all and lots are rented by former Bell’s staff’ says Douglas. ‘And there’s us, who used to work for their big rival Dewar’s, so there’s still a whisky link in one sense.’

  CHAPTER 9

  Ginger Willie – Warehouseman, Bowmore

  JUST AS SPEYSIDE REPRESENTS THE ‘heart’ of mainland malt whisky production, with around half of the country’s distilleries within its boundaries, so Islay is Scotland’s ‘whisky island’. Although Islay is just 240 square miles in size, and only has a population of around 3,000 people, it is home to eight operational distilleries. During recent years its single malts have attained a near cult status among the world’s whisky drinkers.

  Islay is the southernmost of the Inner Hebrides, and lies just 25 miles north of the Irish coast. Its ‘capital’ is Bowmore, which was established by the island’s owner, Daniel Campbell of Shawfield and Islay, in 1768. It was one of the first ‘planned’ villages in Scotland, and sits on the eastern shore of Loch Indaal.

  Bowmore Distillery was founded in 1779, possibly earlier, making it one of the oldest in Scotland, and the first licensed distillery on Islay. Over the years it has been owned by a number of companies, but today is in the hands of Morrison Bowmore Distillers Ltd, itself a subsidiary of the Japanese whisky giant Suntory, which has owned the business since 1994.

  One of the dozen production-related employees at Bowmore is Willie MacNeill, universally known as ‘Ginger Willie.’ He explains that, ‘I used to have red hair in my younger days, and when I joined Bowmore Distillery the assistant manager, who was a cousin of mine, had the same name. He said I would have to have a nickname, so I just said “call me Ginger Willie,” and it stuck. I’m an Ileach born and bred and very proud of it. My grandfather and great-grandfather both worked at Ardbeg Distillery and my mother’s family were all born there.’

  Like so many Scottish islanders, Willie joined the Merchant Navy after leaving school. ‘I spent two years in that before coming home and starting work at Ardbeg in 1969,’ he says. ‘I started as a labourer and became head warehouseman there. I was there till 1976 when Ed McAffer, who was Bowmore’s brewer at the time, asked me if I would like to work at Bowmore. He headhunted me! I lived in Bowmore so it was handy. I spent two years in the malt barns and then in 1985 they asked me to look after the warehouses. It was just a temporary job until they could get somebody else, but I’m still doing it more than quarter of a century later!’

  Ed McAffer is now distillery manager at Bowmore, which is one of only a handful of Scottish distilleries still operating its own floor maltings, with three currently in use. They provide up to 40% of the distillery’s malt requirements, with the rest being sourced from the mainland.

  Within the spectrum of Islay malts, Bowmore is ‘middle-of-the-road’ in terms of its peatiness, being peated to around 25ppm. At the upper end of the phenolic scale, Ardbeg routinely peats its malt to 55ppm.

  The Bowmore maltings require peat to dry and flavour the malt, and Willie notes that, ‘I’ve been cutting peats for fifty years. Originally we cut all peats for Bowmore by hand. You started in March and you finished in September. One other guy and I would spend seven months a year doing it. I did that before I became head warehouseman.’

  Peat was also an important source of domestic fuel for the people of Islay, some of whom still harvest it, and Willie says that, ‘All families would go out at the peat-cutting. The “lots” were a mile from the village, and that’s where Bowmore cuts its peat still today.

  ‘You cut it in May or June and it lies for a week, then you stack it as it dries to let the wind get through it. The top turf gives you the best aromas during malting. It gives good smoke, which is what you really want. Further down is more like coal because it is older. It has heather and trees in it. You get different aromas coming off it compared to the peat cut in the middle of the mainland because of the closeness of the sea to it.’

  ‘When it’s cut by machine the machine sucks it out from under the very top layer and puts it out in “sausages”. When it’s hand-cut it holds more moisture. The machine can cut two hundred tonnes in a short time. In the old days, you would bury the wooden-handled tools in the peat bog until next time to keep the wood from drying out.’

  Having been involved in one of the very earliest stages of whisky production, namely cutting peat for malting, Ginger Willie’s current role in charge of warehousing places him at the opposite end of the whisky-making process, – that is maturing the spirit. Bowmore currently fills around 20% of its output into ex-sherry casks, and the remainder into ex-Bourbon casks, and the entire ‘make’ is now destined for single-malt bottling rather than blending. Some of the fresh spirit is tankered to the mainland, but the majority is matured on site, where a total of around twenty-one thousand casks are stored, with the oldest dating from 1958.

  ‘You don’t get the same whisky when it’s not matured on the island, declares Willie. ‘There’s a heavy sea air and no pollution. We have galvanised hoops on casks here because the old mild steel ones rusted, the salt air affected them. Those sorts of conditions are bound to have a little effect on the whisky.

  ‘Number One warehouse was the first warehouse to be built when the distillery was established. It is partly below sea level and you get very little temperature change in it. During the winter, when it got down to minus eight degrees outside, it was appreciably warmer in the number one warehouse. It mainly houses sherry butts. ‘To me, the ideal warehouse has thick, old walls and is slightly below sea level. You get damp, salt air. Evaporation is slower than in the big, modern ones. You don’t lose as much spirit through evaporation as you do in the middle of the mainland.’

  Traditional stone or brick-built warehouses with cinder flooring and wooden stowing to allow casks to be stored three-high are known as ‘dunnage’ warehouses, while more recent structures tend to be ‘racked,’ facilitating a greater concentration of storage. Many modern warehouses are ‘palletised,’ making for much easier handling with fork-lift equipment.

  In a dunnage warehouse there will be a greater loss of strength rather than volume during maturation due to the prevailing conditions, compared to a racked or palletised warehouse, and there are fewer maturation variables from cask to
cask. However, Willie says that, ‘At Bowmore, warehouse number six is racked rather than dunnage, but I don’t think you get too much difference, although it’s damper in the dunnage ones.’

  On a practical level, Willie notes that, ‘I supervise the fillings, and we tap the casks, repair leakers, and check hoops. It’s about upkeep and security. We don’t just forget about the casks once they are in there. And where casks come out of the warehouses, new whisky goes into that space a week later.

  ‘There weren’t any hoists or fork-lifts in the old days in the warehouses; it was all guys pushing casks up wooden runners. Even today, rolling a halftonne butt is physically hard. But they get used to pushing and controlling them. They can roll them so that they always end in position with the bung up – it’s just practice.

  ‘At Bowmore during the last twenty years we’ve got into spending lots of money on wood. All wood now is ex-first fill. You get the benefit at the beginning. Now the fifteen and eighteen-year-olds are very good whiskies. Overall, Bowmore has a great range of whiskies, and there’s a big market for the twelve-year-old in particular.

  ‘Bowmore is a middle-of-the-road Islay, not too heavily peated. Just right in my opinion. It’s not too peaty but it’s still got the Islay character. Islays are entirely different from whiskies made anywhere else in the world. My personal favourite is the Bowmore fifteen-year-old, which is a lovely, sweet, mild dram with a lasting taste when drunk neat on a winter’s evening.’

  The growing fashion for single malts during the past two or three decades represents a great contrast with drinking habits when Willie was younger, and he says that, ‘When I started at Bowmore, virtually all the whisky we made was for blending. There were hardly any single malts around twenty-five years ago. Bowmore went into J and B Rare, Johnnie Walker, Haig and Chivas Regal. Chivas was a big customer when I was first here.

  ‘Even on the island it would all be Haig, Johnnie Walker and maybe Black Bottle that was being drunk. If there was a single malt it would have cost a fortune. Usually we would have a pint of beer and a Johnnie Walker Red Label.’

  Willie reckons that Bowmore Distillery has not changed dramatically in terms of the way it operates, though today a dozen production workers are employed where once there were around 30. ‘There are fewer guys in the maltings now for one thing,’ he notes. ‘Instead of the malt all being turned by hand there is a now a turning machine, which means one guy per shift can look after all three malting floors. But the place isn’t controlled by computers like some distilleries, and all the “cut points” on the stills are done manually by the operators.

  ‘One of the main changes is that we’re making a lot more whisky than we used to. We’re now making whisky for tomorrow. There have also been environmental changes. We used to burn eighteen to twenty tonnes of peat per week in the kiln with big, blazing fires. That’s now down to twoand-a-half tonnes per week. We cover the blazing peat with “caff,” it’s damped down with dust, in effect, to keep it smouldering.’

  Away from the distillery, Willie declares that, ‘Islay hasn’t really changed too much over the years and we want to keep it as it is. Young people get a good education here but then they have to go to the mainland to find work. My two daughters are in Glasgow. It takes twenty minutes in the air ambulance from Islay to hospital in Glasgow, but it can take more than that time for an ambulance to get from one side of Glasgow to the other.

  ‘There are more holiday homes than there used to be, and in the last twenty years the number of “whisky tourists” coming to the island has been amazing. All the distilleries conduct tours and the hotels, bed and breakfasts, shops and other traders all get something out of it.’

  The downside of this increased traffic to and from Islay is that the pair of car ferries operated by CalMac between the Kennacraig terminal in Argyll and the Islay terminals of Port Askaig and Port Ellen became overbooked, with distillers complaining that sometimes specialist tradesmen and equipment could not reach the island when required.

  CalMac’s response was to invest £24 million in the Gdansk-built MV Finlaggan, which came into service during the summer of 2011. ‘It can carry up to five hundred and fifty passengers and eighty-five vehicles and they are using it along with the Hebridean Isles, which was one of the two smaller ferries that used to work the route.’

  Along with the employment of fewer members of production staff at Bowmore and virtually all other Scottish distilleries, older and retired employees tend to mourn the passing of many of the ‘characters’ who used to be involved in the business of making whisky. Perhaps in our modern, ‘globalised’ world with its increased homogeneity there is less room for true individuals and a greater desire to ‘fit in.’

  ‘When I first started working, there were lots of characters,’ says Willie. ‘They would have their drams every day at work, go home on a Friday night, and hand their pay packets to their wives. The wives would give them some beer money out of it for Friday and Saturday evenings. They did that and they had their drams at the distillery and they lived into their eighties and nineties.

  ‘The dramming was done so that people wouldn’t help themselves, or that was the idea, anyway. When dramming stopped they were given a free bottle a month instead. But you’ll notice that there are no security cameras around the distilleries. If you stole whisky, casks of it, I mean, where could you take it? In Glasgow you could steal it at night and it could be in France by the morning!’

  One thing that does not change on Islay is the winter presence of geese, with tens of thousands of Greylags, Barnacles and White-Fronted geese migrating south from the Arctic. Such are the numbers of geese wintering on Islay now that Scottish Natural Heritage pays farmers compensation for allowing the geese to graze on their land. ‘I see them flying in during September and October, notes Willie, ‘and I say “winter is on its way”. They attract lots of birdwatchers from England, and there are choughs and corncrakes on the island, too, and they’re rare enough now.’

  In terms of his continuing employment, Willie says that, ‘If I didn’t love the job I wouldn’t still be doing it. But you also get security and regular money and a pension and holidays. When I started at Ardbeg I was getting six or seven pounds per hour, which was a lot of money then. If we earned now what we earned in the suxties in real terms we’d be millionaires!

  ‘My wife and I always go on holiday to Eastbourne each year, and I get a new tattoo every time I go. I pay for them in whisky. I’ve got twelve now, including one on my forearm that says “Ginger Willie” in Japanese. Away from work I love trout fishing and I’m a season ticket holder at Rangers, and despite the distance I go once or twice a month. I can go on the ferry for one-pound return now that I’m over sixty!’

  PART THREE

  Blending It

  CHAPTER 10

  John Ramsay – Master Blender, Edrington Group

  DESPITE THE GREAT AND APPARENTLY ever-growing interest in single malt Scotch whisky, it remains a fact that some 90% of all Scotch consumed around the world is drunk in blended format. The Macallans and The Glenlivets, the Glenfiddichs and the Ardbegs may garner a disproportionate number of media column inches, but blended Scotch whisky is still king.

  In particular, many of the ‘emerging’ markets, and especially those in Asia, on which so much ongoing faith is being pinned for the future prosperity of the Scotch whisky industry are not particularly interested in single malts, and may never be to any serious extent.

  It follows then, that the select band of men and women who can lay claim to the title of Master Blender are precious people indeed. One such Master Blender – now with the tag line ‘Emeritus’ – is John Ramsay, who filled the top blending role at The Edrington Group for the last eight years of his 40-year whisky-related career, until handing over the baton to his understudy Gordon Motion in 2009.

  ‘I was born in Glasgow in 1949’, says John, ‘and when I was ten years old my parents moved to Easterhouse.’ This was a large housing scheme, created fr
om the 1950s onwards, half-a-dozen miles east of Glasgow to provide accommodation principally for families who lived in condemned tenements in the east end of the city, but it soon came to symbolise a range of social problems all its own.

  Gang culture was rampant, and at one point the high-profile popular singer Frankie Vaughan became involved in trying to attract more facilities to Easterhouse and defuse tensions between rival gangs, brokering a weapons amnesty and donating funds from his concerts at the Glasgow Pavilion to local youth projects.

  ‘If you had two kids, when one of them got to ten you got a bigger house, and we were one of the first families into Easterhouse,’ explains John. ‘It has since become notorious, but I wasn’t really aware of the gangs when I was growing up, partly because I didn’t go to school in Easterhouse itself. I was in my teens at the time of Frankie Vaughan’s visit.

  ‘I was reasonably academic, but by 1966 I had discovered birds and booze and I only had one Higher qualification, which was not as many as I should have got! I decided to leave school and I wanted a chemistry career, but not by going to university as originally planned. I went into part-time education and was offered a job at Strathclyde Distillery. The lab where I worked was a “bridge” between Kinclaith malt distillery and the main grain side of the place.’

  Strathclyde, a grain distillery, had been built by Seager Evans & Co Ltd during the 1920s in the Gorbals district of the city, an area with a historically more notorious gang culture than Easterhouse! It was soon providing the bulk of the grain requirements for the Long John blend, and in 1957 a small malt distillery, Kinclaith, was installed, in order to provide another malt strand for blending, but Kinclaith closed in 1975 to make way for expansion of the grain distilling operation.