Keepers of the Quaich

I came across a posting by Brother Lakeview following the 06Q4 tasting (sushi paired tasting at Bluff’s) where, after much discussion, a number of future homework assignments, considered to be of interest to the group, were posted. For the most part we haven’t touched these ideas much at all. One of them was “what are Scotland’s three officially oldest distilleries?” I think this question may have sprang from Balblair, a very old distillery, finding its way to a tasting for the first time in 06Q4.

Deciding which distilleries are the oldest largely lies in the definition of “official”. Based on the following factors, which you may or may not agree with, I have formulated a list of the three oldest distilleries. I also annex to this list three other stories of distilleries and their claims to which I will let you decide their merits in overwriting the “official” list. One other item of note, I find in the data that the older distilleries tend to be on the smaller end with respect to capacity. This makes sense to me for a number of reasons (building technologies, scale, demand, etc.) and may be a factor in the demise of old distilleries like Littlemill (isn’t bigger always better?!?).

Factors in establishing “old distilleries”

Rule: Distillery = physical plant; not (brand) name
Implication: Producing spirit in the same building is the single most important consideration even if the enterprise changes names along the way

Rule: Name<>Distillery
Implication: Just because a distillery shares a name with an earlier, separate, and older distillery doesn’t mean that there is a historical connection to that older distillery

Rule: Distillation does NOT require an official license and may be founded before the Excise Act of 1823.
Implication: Illicit and/or established whisky production is considered in the chain if documented and remaining in the same building

Rule: Active NOT Dismantled/Demolished
Implication: To be the oldest “distillery” you have to be currently “distilling” spirit

So, with the above rules in mind, here are…
SCOTLAND’S THREE OLDEST DISTILLERIES

Bowmore, 1779
From the Malt Whisky Yearbook: “Founded in 1779, by John Simpson, Bowmore is Islay’s oldest distillery”
Capacity: 2,000,000 litres/year

Strathisla, 1786
From the Malt Whisky Yearbook: Strathisla is the oldest distillery in the North of Scotland
Capacity: 2,400,000 litres/year

Balblair, 1790
From the Malt Whisky Yearbook: One of Scotland’s oldest distilleries, Balblair was founded in 1790 by John Ross.
Capacity: 1,330,000 litres/year

I give you the following list as alternatives to the above “official” listing. I will leave it to the reader to decide where these place on the “official” list.

For You To Decide

** Undocumented Evidence **
Glenmorangie, “early 18th century”

From the Malt Whisky Yearbook: The Glenmorangie distillery was established in 1843, on the Durnoch Firth by brothers William and John Mathesen. The site originally held a farm distillery under the name Morangie. There is evidence that distillation was carried out at this site during the early 18th century. Officially documented production began in November of 1849.

** Distillery refurbished after dismantling…is it the same? **
Glenturret, 1775

From the Malt Whisky Yearbook: The owners claim the distillery is one of Scotland’s oldest and it is certainly rumoured that distillation was carried out in the area during the early 18th century. Whisky smugglers establish a small illicit farm distillery named Hosh Distillery in 1775. John Drummond is licensee from 1818 until 1837. In 1875, the Hosh Distillery takes over the name Glenturret Distillery and is managed by Thomas Stewart. Between 1921 and 1959 production ceases and the buildings are used for whisky storage and later agricultural storage. 1957 James Fairlie buys the distillery and production restarts in 1959.

** Very old but now demolished **
Littlemill, 1772 (or perhaps the 1300s?)

From the Malt Whisky Yearbook: There are rumours that Littlemill is Scotland’s oldest distillery, possibly even the oldest in the world. Of course, such things are hard to say for certain, though Littlemill has indeed had a long history. The site may have been used for distillation as early as the 1300s. The distillery proper was founded in 1772 by George Buchanan of Glasgow following the acquisition of the Auchterlonie estate.

Brother Bop was kind enough to assign me to select 5 active distilleries that the KOTQ has never tasted that I would like future fir en tighes (hosts) to consider for an upcoming meeting in 2o10.  One of the things I found is this appearance of debate within Scotland of bringing single malts to more people with fancy drink recipes and slick websites that would appeal to a younger audience vs. the classic “here’s your single malt, open it, drink it neat, seal it… repeat”.

Here is my 5 (with some slight edits from the temporary list I had at the meeting – didn’t finish because our site was down…)

1 -Glenglassaugh – Speyside – This distillery closed for 22 years 1986 – 2008 but has reopened and still has an impressive, albeit limited availability, vertical lineup as well as an exciting new spirit dubbed “The Spirit Drink that dare not speak its name”.  The Spirit Drink cannot be called scotch whisky because it was bottled before it had aged the requisite 3 years… something for us to consider… a single malt < 3 yrs old… what is it like?  Should we drink it with a mixer (blasphemy?)

2 – Isle of Jura – Jura - By far my favorite site with one of the best embedded videos of a Scotch purist facing off with a French mixologist debating the merits of true scotch whisky drinking vs. making it more “accessible” to the masses (mixing / etc.)  I had failed to recognize Brother Tao’s prior posting of this phenomenal short but if you haven’t seen it, check out  - http://www.isleofjura.com/richardandcolin/detail.cfm?contentid=349   Also, interesting fact – Jura has roughly 30x more deer than people on the island… The 16yr expression is their bread and butter but they have some nice differentiation/variation as well…. check them out!

3 –  Tomatin – Northern Highland – Huge producer – >5MM litres per year… and yet we’ve never had their spirit flow down our collective palates or uttered a kind description of the body of this fine whisky.  Additionally, they’ve been owned by the Japanese since 1985 and I’m curious to know if they’ve influenced the process at all, whether it be from an economic / political / or process point of view.  Additionally, given their size, they have nice vertical potential from an expression perspective.

4 – Arran - Isle of Arran (Lochranza) - Distillery opened in 1995 and has done some rather interesting things… including some traditional and avant garde finishings to their main expression – 10yr.   I really debated adding this one because they do promote recipes on their site that would involve mixing the 10yr with other liquids, but they have a nice lineup and we have some finishing fans (see Tao, Balgum, etc.)

5 – Tomintoul – Speyside – Another very large producer – > 3MM liters / year and a nice product mix.  Also, their claim to fame is the World’s Largest Whisky Bottle (per Guiness  Book of Records) – 5 ft tall and the equivalent of 150 std bottles (750ml),…. Quite a number of their products are available locally, which was a key factor as I started to get further down the list.  There were a number of others that were like 5b – 5n but I picked this distillery because it could be easily rotated in and has a nice history we could research further.

Slainte!  I’m getting parched just writing this….

One of the missions of our KOTQ website is to not only facilitate knowledge about single malt scotch but to make it personal and facilitate decision making around single malt purchases for group or individual enjoyment. Availability may be the ultimate factor in whether or not most of us even have a dram of certain single malts. Therefore, I have found it important to be able to identify rarer single malts using our distillery filter so that, throughout our walks of life, we might better sieze opportunities to sample rare single malts; be it from a retail shelf or a fine restaurant’s spirits menu.

The flip side of the coin is true as well. Our distillery filter should also be able to highlight those distilleries which are active and commonly available vs. active and with a small capacity thereby making those bottlings potentially harder to come by. Rarity can also be a factor in whether or not you opportunisticly buy an independent bottling or patiently wait for the “official” distillery bottling to show up at your local Binny’s.

So, in order to best understand the data, I thought you would need to know what the industry definitions were for the operational statuses in our database. These operating statuses often correlate to rarity or at least would be a component in a distillery filter setting you specify in trying to understand if that bottle you saw/see at Binny’s is rare enough to invest in. These operational statuses are written in my words but follow closely the statuses used by the annual Malt Whisky Yearbook. There are essentially two categories of operations: “Active” and “Not Active”. I have provided three classes of status within each of these two categories:

1. Active: fully operational distillery producing malt for its various bottling and blending purposes
2. Building Stock: new distillery which has commenced a continuous production of spirit but is too new to have matured any whisky for active status
3. Mothballed: temporary stoppage of production. Can recommence production quickly, if needed, to match demand. Relatively common practice in the industry, however, some mothballed distilleries never make it “off the mat” and do end up dismantled.

1. Stills Removed: refers to sets of stills, that created their own brand of single malt, that existed entirely inside of another’s distillery. Distilleries with this status, despite having their own distillery brand name, never had their “own distillery” or distillery building
2. Dismantled: distillation equipment removed, but the exterior building remains; somehow re-purposed. Although sometimes continuing to be used within the scope of the whisky industry (warehouse, maltings, visitor center, museum) usually it’s to be used outside the scope of the whisky industry entirely (condo, restaurant, studio, live music venue, etc.)
3. Demolished: entire building, and all of its contents, are destroyed and are no more

For those of you who missed it here’s the Forge Club menu that was enjoyed at our 09Q4 meeting. For those who were there enjoy the reminder!

Here is our lineup for 10Q1:

Port Charlotte 7
Glencadam 15
Fettercairn 26
The Macallan 17 Private Edition
Linkwood 17 1990 Cask Strength

If you’ve played with the new Distillery Filter much you will have noticed that one of the “Operational Statuses” for the distilleries is “Building Stock”. As I look out on the single malt landscape over the last 10 years and then turn and look into the next 10 years, one of the exciting things that I see is the onset of brand new distilleries producing single malts. As you know, however, one of the requirements for a spirit to be scotch is that it must age a minimum of 3 years. Yet, as you also know, standard single malts, which are mature enough for discriminating palattes, are typically aged 10 or 12 years. So, these new distilleries have a challenge of establishing a brand yet telling their customers not to show up with their money for 10 years. This is why I have included the “building stock” operational status. Until they’ve released that first standard distillery bottling at around 10 or 12 years I will not be updating their status to “Active” as they are literally building up their stocks for bottlings far down the road. Little did we know that single malts were such a “young man’s game”!

Since there are quite a few of them I wanted to provide a summary to perhaps picque your interest some in these new arrivals on the single malt scene. Here are the ones that I believe are, in fact, building stocks and are real, serious, and viable distilleries that will be showing up on our radars in 5-10 years, you can take a look at these new operations as well as some less-firm distillery projects here:

– Kilchoman an Islay
Owned by the Kilchoman Distillery Co Ltd, the distillery was built and started producing spirits in 2005. As seen in my previous post, Kilchoman is an “artisan” distillery using locally grown ingredients from their own farmland. They are striving to produce the new signature taste of Islay by delivering a highly charactered single malt. You can see more about them here.

– Port Charlotte an Islay
Owned by the Bruichladdich Distillery Co, the distillery is more than a brand extension of Bruichladdich. Port Charlotte is sometimes referred to as the “Phoenix distillery” as it was rebuilt using the old Lochindaal distillery building and is using the stills from the Inverleven distillery. Honorably repurposing this infrastructure, as well as using Bruicladdich’s maltings, have allowed Port Charlotte to already produce a 5, 6, and 7yo distillery bottling.

– Abhainn Dearg a Highlands Island
Owned by Mark Tayburn, the distillery was built and started producing spirits in 2009. This distillery, located on the Isle of Lewis and Harris, is particularly exciting I think because it is a brand new “Island malt” from a new isle. The Isle of Lewis and Harris is west of Skye and Abhainn Dearg will be the westernmost distillery in Scotland. You can see more about them here.

– Daftmill an Eastern Highland
Owned by Francis and Ian Cuthbert, the distillery was built and started producting spirit in 2005. Daftmill will easily be the smallest distillery in Scotland, producing a mere 20,000 litres/yr, and is practically a “micro-brewery”. I think the Eastern Highlands are an interesting region and one that the KOTQ should really know more about than our collective “Glen Garioch experience” so it is exciting to see a brand new Eastern Highland on the scene. You can see more about them here.

– Glengyle / Kilkerran a Campbeltown
Owned by J & A Mitchell, the distillery was revived and started producing spirits in 2004. Glengyle is part of the Springbank family of distilleries but is its own operation and enterprise. I believe it will be producing a single malt under the brand name of Kilkerran. You can see more about them here.

– Roseisle a Speyside
Owned by Diageo, Roseisle is a huge distillery and the first large one built in Scotland since the 1970s. The distillery was built and started producing spirits in 2009 and, I believe, will mostly be used to supply Diageo’s blended scotch whiskies.

One last thing before I leave this topic, some of you may remember some news or talk about a new distillery opening on Shetland, an island north of the Orkney Islands, called Blackwood. Unfortunately, the news is not as good on this front as it appears that the Blackwood distillery is no more and there are no known plans to revive it.

They are Port Charlotte and Kilchoman!

Port Charlotte seems to be an extension of Bruichladdich, is a refurbishing of the long-closed Lochindaal distillery (thanks to Brother Balgam for that), and is using the dismantled equipment from the Inverleven distilleries as well as Bruichladdich’s maltings so it already has released a 5, 6, and 7yo. You can find them as PC5, PC6, and PC7.

Kilchoman (pronounced kilhoman) is an artisan distillery operating on its own farmland and only using local ingredients. Its aim is to be a highly charactered single malt heavy in peat (40 ppm) and become the new classic taste of Islay. Its August 2009 release (a 3yo) won a cask strength award (the BIG award) last month.

I thought there might be some interest in the Whisky Explorer’s Club. Short story: it’s a membership club where they ship you a flight of 4 whiskies (“from around the world”) 6 times each year. You taste them blind and enter your tasting notes into their website to see what the whisky actually was. There are 3 membership levels and the one I just described costs $120/year.

You can read more about it here and/or join right away. I have to say I’m about 99% sure that I am going to do this.

This excerpt is from Whisky Mag’s on-line forum:

“Probably it’s nbs. (new bottle syndrome. ) Just give your dram plenty of time to breathe. Nasty sharp, bitter, sulpur and other off notes go away. Several bottles I hated in the beginning became better and better along the way. A fellow forum member whose name I forgot opens his 105 for a couple of months then closes it and waits a week or so before drinking it.”

Or just another attempt by the English to keep their “subjects” in line economically? You judge for yourself but England is now in the “whisky” business with an operating and distributing distillery for the first time in more than 100 years. The only spirit produced by the St. George’s distillery (by the River Thet, nestled among the farms of Norfolk, eastern England) is 3 years old, aged in old Jim Beam bourbon casks no less, and so is now technically “whisky”.

This sort of reminds me of the English’s sudden interest in manufacturing fine linen when they say their Irish “subjects” actually making money off of it in the 18th and 19th centuries. However, from a regional standpoint if you come across a bottle of St. George’s somewhere it may be interesting to sample it to see if it is an extreme lowland, an extreme eastern highland, or maybe something new altogether.

Here’s an excerpt from the article in the event, from an archiving point of view, that the link above goes dead:

“After three years maturing in charred white oak casks, the first English whiskey in more than a century is finally ready to flow out to excited and curious drinkers around the world. While Scotch is famous across the globe, there has not been a single whiskey distillery south of the border with England in more than 100 years. But at St. George’s Distillery by the River Thet, nestled among the farms of Norfolk, eastern England, the first casks have come of age.

The English Whisky Company’s first run of single malt spirit officially became whiskey on Nov. 27 as it passed the magical three-year mark, and will go on general sale from Dec. 16. Matured in casks used by Jim Beam bourbon whiskey in Kentucky, between 150,000 and 200,000 bottles will be produced per year, while some of the 1,040 barrels produced so far will be stored to mature for up to 20 years. They are currently being bottled by hand, with chairman James Nelstrop stapling the cardboard cases together as black Labrador Bert, the distillery dog, watches on. A bottle of English whiskey retails in Britain for about 35 pounds.”