Whisky

by Aeneas MacDonald

  When everything has been admitted, however, in a question where the last word must remain with the chemist (always assuming that a chemist can be found capable of appreciating the more esoteric niceties of whisky’s flavour and aroma, as well as of conducting experiments with test tubes and retorts) there remains the practical consideration that there are territorial classes of whisky. And it is not difficult to understand why there should be, even if the persistence of local distinctions in manufacture be discounted.

  There are four main geographical factors brought to bear upon whisky.

  First, there is air. The relative purity, humidity, etc. of the atmosphere in and around a distillery is not the least important of the character-bestowing agencies that affect whisky. Practically all the malt distilleries of Scotland are located outside large towns; the most renowned of them stand in bare, open country, far from the smoke and the dust. The great belts of wood and heath which are characteristic of the Banffshire and Morayshire uplands cleanse the winds which sweep across them and impart some of their own purity to the whiskies of hallowed name that are distilled there. Nor is it without significance that about fifty per cent. of the Scottish distilleries stand within a few miles of the sea. There seems to be some obscure association between the qualities of sea-air and the whisky produced in it, although there is no better evidence for the opinion than the fact that a large number of distilleries flourish almost within sight of salt water.

  Second, water. This is so important that it scarcely needs to be mentioned. Yet the effect of water upon the style of a whisky is negative rather than positive. Its virtue consists in adding no flavour—or at least no marked flavour—to the malt which it makes. It should be pure, colourless, without odour, free from micro-organisms or grosser organic matter, above all devoid of mineral contamination, dissolved or in suspension. Each distillery recites the praises of its water-supply.4 Highland Park, the well-known Orkney distillery, obtains its water from two hidden springs: ‘it never sees the light from source to mash dam’. The Glen Elgin-Glenlivet distillery claims to possess (though, indeed, it is not alone in making the claim) the finest distilling water in Scotland, drawn from a mountain spring. The Glenlivet distillery relies upon ‘the finest and purest water on earth, which tumbles down the mountainside for 1,200 feet, and glides through the district in the sparkling stream of Livet’. The Old Bushmills distillery, one of three Irish distilleries making a pure malt spirit, employs the water of the river Bush, which flows through an extensive peat bog. There seems to be no doubt that the effect of such water upon the malt will be somewhat similar to that of the peat which the Highland distiller burns in his kiln. But, as a rule, the distilling water should conform to the specifications set out above. The purer the water the better will it perform the task of converting starch into diastase, maltose, etc., and the purer will be the subsequent vinous fermentation.

  The geographical bearings of all this are obvious. Percolating through subsoil of a certain uniform character, flowing into faults in rock of a specific geological nature, and, finally, running over the stones and earth of river-beds descending from the same watershed down the slopes of the same hills, thus does rain-water acquire a common body of local or provincial qualities. The best and the most productive whisky-district in the world is that which is served by waters flowing from the hillsides of the Cairngorms and their sister outposts of the Grampians in Banff and Moray. Let it not be assumed, however, that the same hillside will at all points yield the same water. There was once a distillery built at considerable expense in a West Highland seaport5 to make use of the waters of a burn flowing from a most august mountainside. The water was all that could be wished for. It was clear and sparkling to the eye, pleasant to the palate, triumphant in the laboratory. But alas! It had one fault. Good whisky could not be made from it. Chemists, maltsters, and still men could try as they might: it was of no avail. The money, it seemed, had been as good as thrown away; the glittering deceitful Highland burn had charmed thousands of pounds out of investors’ pockets, for nothing. But a mile away there was another burn, this time a mere trickle of water and not particularly tempting to look at. Despair suggested an experiment with its water, which came from the same slopes as that of the deceiving burn. The result was astonishing—a whisky of high quality. It is widely used to day in blending, and the buildings of the original distillery are now a storehouse for the new distillery that stands, a mile away, on the waters of the second burn.

  Harry Clarke’s charming illustrations from the Jameson pamphlet Elixir of Life make this arguably one of the loveliest books ever produced on whisk(e)y

  Third, peat. The convenient proximity of a peat bog is an economic necessity for a Highland malt distillery.6 On the north shore of Scapa Flow is Hobister Moor which supplies the peat for the Highland Park distillery. The famous Faemussach Moss, with its inexhaustible peat deposits, contributes something to the distinctive flavour of Glenlivet whisky. For, of course, there is peat and peat. Good whisky is very fastidious in its tastes and demands a peat which is wholly free from mineral impregnations. Even among peats which are not contaminated in this way there is a certain amount of variety owing to differences in the vegetable composition of the fuel.

  Fourth, barley. It is a little too late in the day to pretend that all whisky malts are made from barley grown in the district where the distillery is situated. It has even been said that the barley grown and ripened in a warm climate is more dependable for malting than home-grown barley, which may have suffered from rain after it was in the ‘stook’.7 The proprietor of one well-known Speyside distillery said recently that he had examined whisky made from Californian, Danish, Australian, English and Scotch barley and had not been able to detect any very marked difference between them. Still, he confessed that, if other things were equal, he preferred to use a homegrown barley from the Scots seaboard lying between the rivers Deveron and Ness. The Glenlivet distillery has obtained its barley for generations from the same farms lying in the deep, fertile fields of the Laichs of Banff and Moray, and in this it accords with the practice of the makers of most of the classic whiskies. An inherited skill in raising barley for distillation—for a great deal depends on the degree to which the grain has been allowed to ripen before cutting, and on its garnering and threshing— accounts for the long and close association between farm and distillery which is so common in the North. And, of course, locally-grown barley, even where it is not superior to imported grain, helps to preserve the traditional character of the spirit made from it.

  The whisky districts of Scotland—for Irish whiskey belongs to a separate kingdom and must receive separate notice—are four in number.8 They are:

  1 HIGHLAND MALTS

  2 ISLAY MALTS

  3 CAMPBELTOWN MALTS

  4 LOWLAND MALTS

  The first three of these districts share in common the distinction of employing peat to dry the malt in the kiln. But the Islays and Campbeltowns are not to be thought of as mere subdivisions of the Highland area; they are quite independent and distinct units, and the whiskies they make belong to indigenous and inimitable types which have a definite place and function in the orchestra of whisky.

  There are, at the time of writing, 122 distilleries in existence in Scotland.9 Of these ten make Islay whiskies; ten are in Campbeltown; eight make Lowland malt; one makes both grain whisky and Lowland malt; nine produce a grain whisky; and by far the greater number, eighty four, distil Highland malt whisky. In other words, two thirds of the entire whisky distilling industry of Scotland is devoted to the manufacture of the Highland malt spirit.

  Campbeltown was home to an important group of distilleries now greatly reduced in number

  The habit that distilleries have of crowding into a few closely-defined areas whose natural conditions have been proved by centuries of experience to be most suitable for distilling, is well illustrated by the Campbeltown malt whiskies. The whole of this important group of distilleries is found in or around the town
of Campbeltown on the peninsula of Kintyre, which juts southward from Argyleshire to within a few miles of Northern Ireland. Within the few square miles which make up the whole of this, the smallest of the four whisky areas, a spirit is produced which differs widely from any of the other types of Scotch whiskies. The Campbeltowns are the double basses of the whisky orchestra. They are potent, full-bodied, pungent whiskies, with a flavour that is not to the liking of everyone. Indeed the market for these whiskies is largely confined to Scotland and to the western part thereof. So masterful and assertive are they that the marrying of them to obtain a smooth, evenly-matched blend is an extremely difficult business. Yet, if the full repertoire of whisky is not to be irremediably impoverished the Campbeltowns must remain. As might have been expected in an age when the standardized, anaemic grain-plus-malt are triumphant, Campbeltown distilling has been somewhat under a cloud in recent years. This district has suffered more severely than the others from trade depression. A few years ago it would have been necessary to mention seventeen Campbeltown distilleries, but in the interval the stills of seven of them have grown cold. The ten Campbeltown whiskies which remain are:10

  SPRINGSIDE LOCHHEAD

  RIECLACHAN BENMORE

  KINLOCH SCOTIA

  HAZELBURN (KINTYRE) LOCHRUAN

  GLENSIDE SPRINGBANK

  The Islay distilleries, also ten in number, form a province of whisky no less autonomous and distinct than the Campbeltowns. They are sprinkled along the coast of the beautiful island of Islay off Argyleshire. We may call them the violincellos of the orchestra, somewhat less heavy and powerful of flavour than the Campbeltowns, yet perfectly equipped after their insular fashion, round and well-proportioned. More friendly and accommodating than their brothers of Kintyre, it is their glory that they make a good marriage with the Highland malts of the Spey district, bringing out the qualities of their mate without sacrificing any of their own beauties in the process. They give breadth and fullness to the harmony but they do not drown the voices of less capacious instruments. The ten Islay whiskies are:11

  BUNNAHABAIN ARDBEG

  CAOL ILA MALT MILL

  BRUICHLADDICH LAPHROAIG

  LOCHINDAAL PORT ELLEN

  BOWMORE LAGAVULIN

  Of these ten the most esteemed are probably Caol Ila, Ardbeg, Laphroaig, and Lagavulin, four whiskies with an almost legendary fame. The other day I met a man who during his life as a recruit in the army was kept awake for hours in the night by the prolonged rhapsodies of two Highlanders, men who had nothing else in common in the world but their affection for and praise of Lagavulin.12

  On maps in histories of Scotland one often sees a line, called the ‘Highland Line’, drawn slantingly through the country, north-east from the Clyde estuary in Dumbartonshire through the middle of Perthshire and then veering west and north to include the uplands of Forfarshire, Aberdeenshire, and Morayshire. It runs out to sea about Nairn and reappears at the boundary of Caithness. To the west and north of this line from the sixteenth century onwards was the ‘pale’ of the Celtic clan system and the Gaelic speech. But the Highland Line on a whisky map of Scotland is kinder to Celtic susceptibilities and includes great stretches of country which have been politically, racially, and linguistically Lowland for long centuries. If a straight line be drawn on the map between Dundee on the east and Greenock in the west it will represent the boundary between Highland and Lowland malt whiskies. Everywhere to the north of this invisible frontier is the dominion of the Highland whisky, its southern outpost in Stirlingshire on the very edge of the line. (And, indeed, as in the case of other frontiers and other outposts, there is some dispute as to which territory is the rightful owner of this distillery, whose product, of less markedly Highland character than the others, appears variously as a Highland and a Lowland malt in different trade lists.)13

  The Lagavulin Mash Tun and Mash Man, ca. 1930

  The Highland whisky area is made up of one or two fairly distinct sub-divisions, of several scattered units which may be grouped together for convenience under county headings, and of one thronged and important core or nucleus. Ignoring this last for the moment, we shall take the Highland whiskies in rough geographical order, beginning with the most northerly.

  Pomona, the main island of Orkney, forms one of the sub-divisions of the Highland area. It has three distilleries, Scapa, Stromness,14 and Highland Park, at Kirkwall, of which the last is probably the best known. Depending largely, as they do, on imported barley, much of which comes to them from the great grain-growing lands of the Lothians, these distilleries produce a whisky of strong individuality, resembling not the famous Banffshire makes but rather the Aberdeenshire group of Highland malts which are sometimes given the name of ‘North Country’ whiskies. Highland Park, the best of the three, is one of the small first class, the premiers crus, as it were, of Scotch whiskies. The distillery is the most northerly of all and one of the most ancient, having been founded in 1789 near the site of a bothy kept by one Magnus Eunson, a famous Orkney smuggler, who was beadle (Anglicè—verger) of the local U.P. Church and is said to have concealed his illicit spirits under the pulpit of the Church. When excisemen attended the services, not altogether for pious reasons, Eunson, we are told, used to announce the psalms in tones of exceptional unction.15 He was a true brother in the spirit of that other illicit but devout distiller who, in reply to the reproaches of his minister, said, ‘I alloo nae sweerin’ in the still, everything’s dune decently and in order.’ But it is unlikely that the Orkney clergy found fault with the illegal activities of their flocks. In Hall’s Travels in Scotland (1807) we read, ‘It is a shame that the clergy in the Shetland and Orkney Isles should so often wink at their churches being made depositories of smuggled goods, chiefly foreign spirits.’ Indeed, if we owe the still which has given us Highland Park to the convenient blindness of the Orkney ministers, there will be those among us who will say that churches have been put to worse uses before now.

  A delightful promotional postcard for the Stromness Distillery’s Old Orkney brand. The distillery closed in 1928 when the town voted to go ‘dry’

  Caithness, which in the eighteenth century was sending whisky to Skye and the Hebrides, to day furnishes one whisky, at Wick, where the Pulteney Distillery is found. Sutherland has at Brora a distillery where the famous Clynelish16 is made. This admirable malt blends exquisitely with the Speyside whiskies. We have Pro fessor Saintsbury’s word for it that the finest whisky he ever blended had for its ingredients Smith’s Glenlivet and Clynelish. Ross shire contributes five whiskies (Glen Skiach17 is not to be found in the latest register): these are Glenmorangie, distilled at Tain, Dalmore and Te aninich from Alness on the northern shores of Cromarty Firth, and Ferintosh (prematurely mourned by Burns) from the other shore. In Glenoran to the north of Beauly is situated the Ord-Glenoran distillery.

  KEY TO MAP OF DISTILLERIES

  1. GLEN SKIACH.†

  1a. FERINTOSH.†

  2. ORD GLENORAN.

  3. GLEN ALBYN.†

  4. MILLBURN.†

  5. GLEN MHOR.†

  6 BUNNAHABAIN.

  7. CAOL ILA.

  8. BRUICHLADDICH.

  9. OCHINDAAL.

  10. BOWMORE.

  11. ARDBEG.

  12. MALT MILL.†

  13. LAPHROAIG.

  14. PORT ELLEN.

  15 LAGAVULIN.

  16. GLENGOYNE.

  17. EDRADOUR.

  18. STRONACHIE.†

  19. GLENCOULL.†

  20. GLENCADAM.

  21. GLENGARIOCH.

  22. ARDMORE.

  23. GLENCAWDOR.†

  24. BRACKLA.

  25. DALLAS DHU.†

  26. BEN ROMACH.

  27. GLENBURGIE.

  28. MILTON DUFF.

  29. GLENLOSSIE GLENLIVET.

  30. LONGMORN GLENLIVET.

  31. LINKWOOD GLENLIVET.

  32. GLENMORAY GLENLIVET.

  33. GLENELGIN GLENLIVET.

  34. CO
LEBURN GLENLIVET.†

  35. SPEYBURN GLENLIVET.

  36. GLENSPEY.

  37. GLENROTHES GLENLIVET.

  38. GLENGRANT GLENLIVET.

  39. CRAIGELLACHIE GLENLIVET.

  40. GLENTAUCHERS GLENLIVET.

  44. STRATHISLA MILTON KEITH.

  45. KNOCKDHU.

  46. BANFF.†

  47. MACALLAN GLENLIVET.

  48. ABERLOUR GLENLIVET.