From the Editors

So there we were having dinner. Shellfish to be precise. It seemed the right time to reach for a bottle of Muscadet. Stay with me. It was from Chéreau-Carré (their Comte Leloup top be precise, available from the Wine Society), had some age, had spent some time sucking up depth and richness from lazing around on its lees and was wonderful. ‘Muscadet, all my troubles seemed so far away,’ I began to sing.

Muscadet, eh? In a previous life in a previous century I used to sell wine and for a period Muscadet was the style to go for. Fresh, with racy mineral qualities, and clean acidity it was reliable, the bottle you’d choose for an aperitif, a picnic, a seafood dinner. Slowly the ox cart of popularity began to creak and rumble. As its popularity elided into ubiquity so the wine became thinner, meaner, pricier until we all moved away seduced by the allure of New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc or somesuch. Muscadet? So last year, then so last decade.

Staying true: Whisky innovation shouldn’t have to mean radical shifts in a brand’s DNA

It’s an example of how as a species we demand constant stimulation. We are by nature fickle, reluctant to stick with the same thing so that even if Muscadet had retained its overall quality we’d still have slowly drifted apart, leaving it like a half-recalled, once best friend from schooldays. 

This is why producers have to find new ways of keeping their offer exciting. One of the roots of innovation is this need to keep things fresh, while retaining some identifying signature. It’s new, but simultaneously reassuring. That reassurance is important as it shows you, the drinker, that things have not moved so far that the elements which made you love the whisky/wine/beer in the first place have not been lost, they’ve just been moved forward gently.

Which brings the recent Mortlach... er… retrenchment to light. It’s not often that a major firm puts its hands up and says, ‘OK, we screwed up,’ which is effectively what has happened. They tried, they overreached, they admitted they were wrong and went back to what made the whisky special in the first place. Better to be honest and suffer the inevitable, if short-term, cries of ‘Told you!’ than trying some ham-fisted misdirection. ‘New Mortlach? No, nothing’s changed.’ Sadly, no-one else seems to be following in their footsteps.

Innovation is a tricky balancing act and one which can too easily tip into a blind panic where short term fixes take over. People like gin, but don’t like juniper? No bother, we’ll make it fruity…  and pink. They don’t like the taste of whisky? Fine, we’ll filter that nasty taste out. People like Tequila? OK, let’s make an agave/malt mashup (I’m not against using Tequila casks by the way if they add to quality and don’t overpower the character of the whisky).

Honest mistake: Diageo relaunched its Mortlach range after admitting its previous series failed to hit the mark with fans

Throwing ideas around in a blind panic is the equivalent of trying to play darts in a crowded pub while blindfolded and stoked up on a mix of Red Bull and Buckfast. Just because an idea is new doesn’t mean it is good. Often a tweak is required, rather than a radical shift.

Equally, trying to be all things to all drinkers isn’t the answer. Rather, it shows a lack of confidence in the flavours which built your reputation in the first place. Single malt, as I’ve said on numerous occasions, is about individuality, the fact that this distillery makes something substantially different to its neighbour. These are the flavour boundaries along which you can play but, I’d argue, you cannot break. Sadly, too many malts are forgetting that.

Sticking to the DNA of the whisky may seem boring, but it is substantially harder to quietly get better at what makes you special in the first place, finding the flavour links, the nuances and subtleties, rather than swinging from one extreme to the other on a fraying rope of credibility.

And you know what? Sometimes making these small, incremental shifts works just as well. Monsieur Chéreau has looked at what his vineyard can give and how to maximise that expressiveness rather than rushing around trying to find a space for it on the next bandwagon leaving Nantes. He stuck to what he knew and continued to make it better. There’s a lesson there methinks.

We huddle in the tower around the wee copper still. Smoke rises, caught in the beams of sunlight. There’s a hissing from inside the pot, the neck is getting warmer, then steam starts to lift off the worm tub and the first drops begin to leak reluctantly out of the pipe into the flask. Claire Mackay dips her finger in it, grins and nods, James Donaldson does the same, then it’s my turn. Yes, the angelica is there.

Claire is a historian and practitioner of herbal medicine; James is Bruichladdich’s professional forager. That morning we had wandered the coast, roadside and woods of Islay’s Rinns in search of herbs with which to distil this, our own usquebaugh.

I won’t give you the exact recipe, only to say that the following were picked: angelica seed, wild thyme leaf and flower, bramble leaf, creeping thistle tops, meadowsweet flowers, hog seed and wood avens.

Medical practice: Distilling wild, foraged herbs to create local usquebaugh

While all had their medicinal properties, they also had their own compelling flavour: the heavy vanilla and amaretto of meadowsweet, the Seville orange-like bittersweet punch of hog seed, or the seductive apricot and honey of creeping thistle.

It was our own recipe, but one which conceivably could have been made on Islay centuries ago. Distilled spirit started life as medicine, and all of the ingredients we had picked had their own properties.

As James pointed out, Islay’s terroir means that it is home to some plants which might not be found on other islands – and vice versa – leading to the thought that as usquebaugh grew, each location would have begun to have its own specific character and specialisation.

Could it be that when distillers eventually gave up flavouring their spirit, they still searched for ways to retain the aromas and flavours which had long set their own whisky apart? Impossible to answer, but an intriguing notion nonetheless.

The moment of whisky’s history we were channelling came earlier than that. We were tapping into the period when the medical shifted into the social – probably around the end of the 15th century. After all, Hector Boece in his History of Scotland in 1526 wrote that when his ancestors were ‘of a set purpose to be merrie [sic]’ they used herbs to flavour their aquavitae.

Local barley: Are usquebaugh’s flavours still apparent in Scotch whisky’s terroir?

It would be another 100 years before whisky would become the preferred drink of the islands, thanks to the Statutes of Iona in 1609 which banned the sale and consumption of wine in that part of Scotland in order to curb excessive drinking. The populace then turned to distillation whenever they were of a set purpose… which was relatively frequently.

We’re also honouring the links to the Beaton family (originally MacMeic-bethad/ MacBeth). They were doctors, possibly originally from Ireland who arrived, legend has it, on Islay in the 13th century as part of the entourage of Aine O’Cathain when she married Angus Og MacDonald, Lord of the Isles.

For 400 years, the Beatons were hereditary physicians to the Scottish crown – from Robert the Bruce to James VI and I – and to the wider populace. They were doctors, surgeons and alchemists, translators of medical texts from Latin to Gaelic; upholders of an older botanical-based medical tradition at a time when the rest of the country followed a different path.

Make a wish: The smooth stone turned by many a visitor to the Beaton’s Celtic cross

Just as Gaelic song is the earliest source of information about whisky making and drinking, so the Beatons’ Gaelic texts are an overlooked resource of the early days of medicine and distillation – the roots of those usquebaughs and proto-whiskies.

Later that afternoon, Claire and I head to Kilchoman Kirk. This was Beaton land, granted to the family for free in return for their services. In the graveyard stands a Celtic cross erected at some point in the 14th or 15th century by Thomas Beaton for his father Patrick, his mother, and his wife. On its pedestal are four depressions. The deepest is filled by a smooth stone worn into a pear shape by centuries of turning deiseil (with the sun) in order to grant wishes.

We look across to Kilchoman distillery and over the fields of barley, growing for it and Bruichladdich, ripening after this perfect long, hot summer. Whisky making has moved a long way from the eye-smarting smoke and the smell of efficacious herbs rising from the new spirit, yet those aromas are still there in today’s whiskies, rooted in earth if you look hard enough. We’re so different and yet not so far removed.

Sometimes we can get so immersed in our own interests that we forget the rest of the world doesn’t necessarily have the same level of knowledge or experience. Many readers of Scotchwhisky.com will no doubt be able to explain the simplest differences between Bourbon and single malt, but – as Glenfiddich’s Jennifer Wren can attest – ask a stranger in the street and you’ll likely be met with a blank face.

That said, general knowledge of whisky is increasing – we’re a curious bunch, and whisky naturally encourages exploration, what with all its complexities and scientific wonders that seemingly stray into the realms of magic.

They say toddlers are like sponges, soaking up every word and fact, including the most surprising (and random) pieces of information, but I think the same is true of whisky enthusiasts; frankly anyone who’s fascinated by a particular subject. When we’re inspired by something, when a topic ignites our curiosity and leads us down that rabbit hole, our thirst for knowledge can be insatiable.

For the most part, we also have a tendency to believe what we read or are told by authoritative sources – the ‘experts’, be they lecturers, brand ambassadors, tour guides or journalists – why wouldn’t we? But it’s this element of trust that makes it so vitally important that these educators are educated themselves, and teach the truth.

One of the most explosive responses to an article published by Scotchwhisky.com – coincidentally almost a year to the day – was to an exploration of the role brand ambassadors have in dispelling whisky myths and clichés. Yes, I’m going there again. But before the trolling commences, bear with me.

Truth or propaganda?: Whisky enthusiasts put their trust in experts’ assumed knowledge

One cross-category myth that is arguably perpetuated more than any other is that Irish whiskey is more accessible to new drinkers than Scotch, because it isn’t peated. Never mind the fact that Ireland also produces peated whiskey, and the more glaringly obvious fact that around 90% of all Scotch is unpeated. I’ve heard this statement several times in the past 12 months, including during a tour at the Jameson Bow Street experience in Dublin, and most recently in a whisky seminar at the Tales of the Cocktail bartender conference in New Orleans just last month.

When a respected figure – tour guide, writer or ambassador – tells an audience of eager, novice drinkers that all Scotch whisky is peated, they are going to be believed, regardless of whether that statement is true or not. Those listeners are then going to tell their friends, their bar’s patrons, and thus the message spreads like an ‘alternative fact’ on Facebook.

In the heart of Dublin’s old town, Jameson Bow St. is one of the largest whisky attractions in the world, drawing thousands of visitors every year. It’s a powerful mouthpiece for showcasing Irish whiskey to global visitors, and – quite worryingly – it’s my understanding that that particular mistruth is part of the tour guides’ script. Bizarre for a company that’s also the world’s second-largest Scotch whisky producer.

In the same Tales seminar, whisky enthusiasts were also told by one ‘craft’ American distiller that ‘Scotch whisky producers don’t think barley has any flavour, but we do,’ and, ‘we’ve used 10 barley varietals in the past year, which is more than the Scotch industry combined.’ Perhaps most disconcertingly, that ‘none of the Scotch producers believe the strain of yeast matters – why would you not care about the quality of your ingredients?’

Whisky Mecca: Jameson Bow St. is one of the most-visited whisky attractions in the world

Not one of these statements is true, yet when the educator is a respected figure they are more likely to be taken as fact. There is no excuse for category or brand bashing to make an ambassador’s own appear more revolutionary, unique or interesting. The cynic in me would say it’s basic propaganda designed to improve image and increase sales.

Perhaps, however, part of the issue is a lack of knowledge from the educators themselves. Some are trapped in their own category bubble – because their world is comprised of Irish whiskey, or Bourbon, or American single malt, or Scotch for that matter, the fundamentals of other categories are elusive. Yet in order to teach you need to be able to see the whole picture, rather than inflate an opinion based on the one piece of the jigsaw in your hand.

At the recent World Whisky Forum held in the Cotswolds, various distillers from across the world spoke of their plans to distil rye whisky, but not one communicated their story in a way that denigrated another distillery or country. There’s a real sense of collectiveness among global distillers, a sense of sharing experiences and innovations for the benefit of the entire whisky world. That’s the spirit of the global industry, and something every educator needs to remember.

This isn’t ‘Brand Ambassador Bashing: Season 2’, but rather a timely reminder that as consumers we need to keep our minds open, and that the industry needs to be more aware of the entire whisky universe, rather than just what’s happening in their own backyard.

Avoid cliché. That’s what my mentor Michael Jackson told me. Probably more than once. It’s hard to do. Aren’t clichés just shopworn truths whose meaning has been diminished by careless handling over the years?

It sprang to mind when we were stravaiging across the Highlands. Mountains? Tick. Heather coming into bloom? Tick. Hairy coos? Tick. All we needed was a red stag at bay looking into the middle distance, and our I-Spy Book of the Highlands would have been complete.

Maybe the folks on the Lochs & Glens coach would be lucky enough to grab that one. There you have it. The clichés. But the mountains and heather and coos are real. Why, then, are we so irritated by them?

It’s been buzzing about at the (very) back of my mind while I’m trying to relax on holiday, surrounded by birds – a hen harrier yesterday, which was a bit of treat – waves, wind, family, friends, music and books.

There’s a lot of poetry, and it was a poem which brought the whole cliché thing back into focus once again, namely Robin Robertson’s Camera Obscura, which includes fictive diary extracts from the (real) pioneering photographer David Octavius Hill, who worked in Edinburgh in the 1840s.

‘The price we pay for railways, better roads & speedier mail,’ one extract goes, ‘is seeing our most able Artists & Scientists leave for London – their places taken by Thomas Cook travellers decked in tartan looking for “The Picturesque”. It is the end of an old song.’

Robertson may have invented the diary, but the debate about how Scotland was being packaged and sold was real, even in those days. Here’s the dilemma: Scotland became popular thanks in part to the novels of Walter Scott, the poetry of Burns, the paintings of Landseer and the Royal approval of Victoria and Albert. 

It was cleared, so there was more romantic space to gaze at without the inconvenience of people working in the foreground. The sheep and deer helped to reduce the number of trees ruining the view, making things more acceptably ‘wild’.

Stag at bay: Landseer’s Monarch of the Glen helped create a Scottish romantic stereotype

Hill and his partner Robert Adamson created calotypes of not just Edinburgh’s great and good, but its overlooked: fishermen, oyster sellers, workers. They are early attempts to move away from easy stereotypes.

Not that they appeared to succeed. By the end of the 19th century, Scotland was ‘North Britain’ (they even named a distillery that to reinforce the point), its music reduced to music hall caperings, its literature and art overtly sentimental.

Or was it? At the start of the holiday, my daughter and I went along to the exhibition on Charles Rennie Mackintosh and the Glasgow style at Kelvingrove – which showed how radical he and his colleagues were in terms of art, architecture and design at the turn of the 20th century. Anything but clichéd.

Kelvingrove also has a new gallery dedicated to the Glasgow Boys, a loose collective of artists who worked together in the 1880s and whose work was anything but nostalgic or hackneyed.

They painted in the open air, used workers and children as their models, aimed for realism, or at the other extreme created fantastical, gilded and mythical worlds. For a brief period, they were the most radical artists in Britain.

They were pushing back, just as Hill and Adamson had done, and as the poet Hugh MacDiarmid would do from the 1920s onwards.

‘Scotland small? Our multiform, our infinite Scotland small?
Only as a patch of hillside might be a cliché corner
To a fool who cries “nothing but heather!”… 
How marvellously descriptive! And incomplete.’
Scotland Small (1943)

Edinburgh life: Fisher girls at Newhaven, captured by David Octavius Hill (c. 1843-7)

MacDiarmid’s argument is not to ignore the heather, but to look more closely (which takes us back to Nan Shepherd) and realise that there is richness and complexity beneath the cliché.

He and other writers of his generation – Aeneas MacDonald, Neil Gunn – also began to write about their love of whisky and use it as a symbol, or example, of identity, in their attempts to move away from the glib and sentimentalised idea of ‘Scotland’.

For them, single malt represented the ‘real’ Scotland. It was linked closely to the land and the people rather than – heaven help us – the world of blends, which was only concerned with business, export and balance of trade. 

Before anyone jumps on me, this is too partisan an outlook. You can see their point, though. Whisky had wrapped a plaid of late Victorian clichés around itself and sold the world Scotch-land.

On one hand you could say this is where it all went wrong but, were it not for these simple signifiers, would Scotch be where it is today? 

As I’ve said before, it’s strange that we still fulminate about whisky’s co-opting of tartan, coos and heather when the industry has long moved away from it. Why then does that perception linger?

Edinburgh ale: David Octavius Hill (right), with James Ballantine and Dr George Bell

Perhaps we haven’t been clever enough to create a richer alternative, which is why now, when there are huge opportunities to talk about whisky (and its role in Scottish culture), it is once again being reduced and simplified to lists and ‘10 things you need to know’ – the online equivalent of an out-of-focus photo taken from the window seat of a Lochs & Glens coach speeding through Glenshee.

‘People don’t have the time,’ we are told. Well, you know, we do. We like films, and binge on box sets. We read books, we sit and have conversations. Yes, we need to find new ways to talk and explain and communicate, but that can’t be done through simplification to the point of inanity because, by doing that, you simply create a whole new set of clichés.

The same battle fought by the writers and artists continues. Resist. Push back. Bring the real Scotland to life. Look into the heather, go to the fishing villages or mines, paint the clarty boots, the slums and the wild coast.

Yes there are coos amongst the heather. Yes, people make shortbread. Don’t ignore it, but don’t ignore the fact that there is more.

It was about halfway up Ben Rinnes when we began to wonder whether it was such a smart idea to carry a drone, cameras, and sound equipment up a 2,759-foot (840 metre) mountain. My assertions that it wasn’t far now and it would definitely be worth it when we saw the vista from the summit were, I suspect, beginning to grate with my companions. The idea that we suffer for our art (in this case the forthcoming documentary The Amber Light) was beginning to pall.

When the gradient eased a little I paused for a rest. In among the heather on the side of the track were strange bright orange nodules, golden mutant berries huddling low in the ground. I’ve been up the Ben many times, but had never spotted them before. I bent down and picked one. Potentially poisonous, but what the hell.

I tentatively tasted it and the flavour flooded by palate: honey-sweet, slightly milky, gentle hints of apricot. I’d tasted a sweeter version before in Norway, albeit in a jar. Cloudberries. The more I looked, the more there were, nestling in the roots and tangle. We tasted them, grinning, amazed.

Alpine fruit: The cloudberry grows in cool climates, and has a milky, honey-sweet flavour

I reached into my pocket, pulled out a book and read:

‘Each of the senses is a way in to what the mountain has to give. The palate can taste the wild berries, blaeberry, ‘wild free-born cranberry’ and, most subtle and sweet of all, the avern or cloudberry a name like a dream. The juicy gold globe melts against the tongue, but who can describe a flavour? The tongue cannot give it back. One must find the berries, golden-ripe, to know their taste.’

That was Nan Shepherd, writing in her remarkable account of the Cairngorms, The Living Mountain. It’s been a touchstone since I discovered a copy in a second-hand bookshop in Ballater. This book – written in 1944, but not published until 1977 – is about her engagement with the mountains. Rather than having an obsessive drive for the summit, she takes her time, stravaiging into their hidden depths, experiencing the place with all of her senses.

It’s a passage which I use on a semi-regular basis in talks – and also as a reminder to myself about how vital it is to stay engaged with the world. After all, if you cannot write and talk about a taste unless you have experienced it, the more you do taste, the more you tune in to the world and, by extension, the liquid.

I’d read the passage to Alan Winchester [master distiller of The Glenlivet, who was recently awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award by the International Spirits Challenge] the day before as we’d walked to the abandoned Scalan seminary, discussing how astonishing it was that here in the wilds of the Braes of Glenlivet in the 18th century, were people discussing theology in Latin while growing their food, cultivating the land, milling, brewing and, who knows, maybe even distilling, all the while wondering when this, the only place in Scotland where priests could be trained, would be raided. A place of contemplation and yet of rebellion; a locale for rebels and anti-establishment thinking, a home for dreamers.

Elevated perspective: Scaling Ben Rinnes gives Broom an opportunity to reflect on how experiences shape us

We’d been talking of the importance of place, and how smells can help root you in a landscape. ‘I don’t get why people think of Scotland as being dark and grim,’ Alan had said. ‘You go walking and the landscape is lit up with colours and scents. For me it’s the smell of home.’

Nan has her own take:

‘So with the scents. All the aromatic and heady fragrances – pine and birch, bog myrtle, the spicy juniper, heather and the honey-sweet orchis, and the clean smell of wild thyme – mean nothing at all in words. They are there, to be smelled.’

I first read this with a sense of dismay because it appears to open up a potential issue with writing tasting notes. Can they really mean nothing? After all, you can point to an object, get people to share a sound, compare a touch, but taste and smell are internalised and personal. Is it a pointless exercise trying to get people to understand what you are experiencing?

It’s another reason why I return to the passage regularly. What she means, I believe, is that to truly understand the world you have to experience it fully: immerse yourself in it totally: see it, touch it, hear its sounds, and taste and smell everything. Log the sensations away, use them as aids to navigation, allow them to bring you deeper into the world of experience.

And what of the whisky makers of the Braes? I’d asked Alan. Could they have been influenced by the smells around them: the heather honey, the herbs, the grass? ‘I think it’s inevitable,’ he’d answered.

The landscape is a living one. Engage with it, allow its sensations to fill you, let the cloudberries, fresh and wild, melt on the tongue, never to be forgotten.

In the sunlit Champagne vineyards above Epernay, Hervé Lourdeaux is holding two vine leaves in his hands. One is a dark, glossy green; the other lighter, its paler green punctuated by a delicate white line. ‘Coton,’ he says, tracing it with one finger – and, indeed, it is as if someone has patiently stitched a thread into the leaf’s veins.

The darker leaf is Pinot Noir, the star Champagne grape variety alongside Chardonnay; the pre-eminent pairing here, as it is further south in Burgundy. The cotton-veined leaf belongs to Pinot Meunier.

Pinot what? If you’ve never heard of it, don’t worry. Champagne producers are nothing if not savvy marketers, and most of them would much rather talk about the sexy Chardonnays of the Côte des Blancs or the vibrant Pinot Noirs of the Montagne de Reims. Pinot Meh-nier? Not so much.

And yet Meunier is vital to Champagne. It makes up almost one-third of the vineyards, meaning that your favourite fizz is likely to have a healthy dose of it in the blend. Fan of Krug Grande Cuvée? It’s 25% Pinot Meunier.

Fruity and rounded, Meunier is strong and stable in the vineyards when Pinot Noir and Chardonnay are temperamental, challenged by Champagne’s marginal climate for growing grapes. More than once, Meunier has got Champagne houses out of jail in a difficult vintage.

Marne Valley: In Champagne, Meunier plays a similar role to grain whisky in Scotch

Recently, belatedly, this is being acknowledged in the region – and beyond. There are single varietal Pinot Meunier Champagnes; English sparkling wine producer Rathfinny of West Sussex describes Meunier as a ‘revelation’, while over in Hampshire, Jacob Leadley includes a healthy dose of the grape variety in his excellent Black Chalk wines.

Meunier is no longer the grape variety that dare not speak its name, the Cinderella of the vineyards. ‘You need it for the non-vintage,’ says Laurent Fresnet, chef de cave at Champagne Henriot and a colleague of Lourdeaux. ‘It’s young, it’s sweet and it’s quick to mature.’

Remind you of anything whisky-related? Here’s Grant’s master blender Brian Kinsman, talking about Girvan grain at the recent relaunch of the Grant’s range: ‘Very light, very easy-to-mature whisky… From the time it goes into the cask, we’re adding flavour from the cask.’

Blends built Scotch; non-vintage blends built Champagne. Both are the youngest incarnations of their respective drinks, and both need the mellowing influence of their unheralded components: grain whisky and Pinot Meunier.

Without them, luxury single malts and prestige cuvée Champagnes would be a pipe dream. They pay the bills – and they should never be undervalued.

Jon Hassell, creator of ‘Fourth World’ music (a mix of electronics, trumpet, minimalism, jazz and ethnic sounds), has released a new album called Listening To Pictures: (Pentimento Volume One).

Any new work by him is something to be welcomed – his music has the ability to create strange, sometimes eerie, sometimes calming dream states, summoning up impossible places; it is a soundtrack to dreams. 

Recently, as part of a beginners’ guide to his works, he talked about his approach to the new piece in an interview for the excellent music website The Quietus.

It started, rightly enough, with an explanation of that strange-looking Italian word, pentimento which, for those of us who are not art historians, is probably not a term we will have encountered in our daily lives.

It’s a term used in art, referring to any marks, brush strokes, or images of earlier workings which reappear in a picture and are then used as elements in the final composition.

‘I started seeing (or was that hearing?) the music we were working on in the studio in terms of that definition,’ says Hassell in the interview. ‘Seeing it in terms of a painting, with layers and touch-ups and start-overs, with new layers that get erased in places that let the underlying pattern come to the top and be seen (or heard).

‘Most of the world is listening to music in terms of forward flow – based on where the music is “going” and “what comes next”. 

‘But there's another angle: vertical listening is about listening to “what's happening now” – letting your inner ears scan up and down the sonic spectrum, asking what kind of “shapes” you’re seeing, then noticing how that picture morphs as the music moves through time.’

Vertical listening: Jon Hassell’s music challenges us to hear it in the moment

The mention of shapes piqued my interest because, for me, shape is the first clue in trying to tease out a whisky’s secrets. Is it round like a ball, or angular? Does it narrow to a point at the back of the tongue, or start in that way, expanding at the finish? Does it ripple, or it is angular? Does it touch the top of the mouth or skim along like some kind of stealth bomber? 

I then like to taste in tiny sips, taking some on to the tip of the tongue and seeing what flavours are there; then another, this time holding it in the middle of the tongue; then another for the back-palate and the finish; then a final, larger sip, flooding the mouth to get the full impression. 

It’s the best way (for me at least) to see how flavours arise and then disappear, and to pick up characters which otherwise may have remained hidden – a way of seeing the complete picture. Then, like Hassell’s music, you begin to see the layers within the whisky as it reveals its heart. 

Pentimento can sometimes only emerge after time as the paint begins to thin, revealing what lies beneath. This is exactly the same as what happens in a cask: the loss, the absorption, the integration and the angel’s share: the way in which time and air, spirit and oak move in strange accords, shifting in emphasis, flowing, covering, obscuring and revealing. Those angels work in mysterious ways. 

Rancio is a good example of this process: the precursors for those enigmatic flavours of tropical fruits and wax, slowly forming and concentrating over time, waiting for the lighter aromas to dissolve into air, finally unveiling themselves. Layers accrue over time, but some also disappear.

They are there to be noticed when we sip the whisky, just as they are there in the cask as the spirit matures. Hassell’s way of listening is also our way of tasting – not just horizontally: ‘what’s next?’ – but vertically as well.

Where does that place us? Right in the moment once again, observing what is happening at each point; observing the moment each flavour appears, allowing them to intrigue and thrill, helping you peel back the layers and see what is there: the original intent of the distiller, the influence of the cask, the caress of air, the taste of time.

Thanks Jon.

It might be the heat, it might be age, but some things just seem to make me somewhat tetchy at the moment. The latest was a press release [no names – I may be irritated, but I’m not going to go down the name and shame route] which claimed that a certain distillery was, ‘one of the most unique in Scotland’.

Let’s pause for a second and figure out what (if anything) this phrase means. Part of the tetchiness is ingrained. My first editor had a profound hatred of the world ‘unique’ and it was banned from our pages. ‘Everything is unique,’ he would point out in a rare moment of Zen-like clarity. ‘It is absurd to emphasise this point. Bad English!’ and out would come the red pencil. It’s a rule which has stuck with me.

Anyway, I think we can agree that the whole premise of single malt whisky is that each distillery makes a spirit which is (careful now, Dave, Ed) singular and representative of that place alone, i.e. (and sorry, Peter) it is unique to that place.

‘Unique’ regime: Individual approaches to processes such as fermentation are part of what sets distilleries apart

‘Most unique’ is a tautology. If something is already unique then it can’t be more unique than anything else because of the whole notion of it being unique in the first place. The logic twists even further when you consider the phrase, ‘one of the most unique’. This infers that there are some distilleries which are more unique than others – a cadre of the uber-unique. This is where it gets even more convoluted.

Saying this suggests that there are other distilleries – one would expect from the term ‘one of the most’ that this refers to the majority of them – which are somehow less unique. If this is true, then the notion that single malt is built on a foundation of individuality has come crashing down.

My initial exasperated response was that this was simply (another) example of bad English being used in a press release, but the more I looked at it the more I began to wonder whether the writer might have placed a coded message within what appears initially to be a jumble of words held together by tortuous logic.

It was a topic which seemed to repeat itself throughout the recent World Whisky Forum when speaker after speaker, no matter the size of their production, said in some way diversity is key, risk is vital, moving forward is what matters.

In other words, what keeps whisky alive, no matter where it is in the world, is a constant, rigorous, examination of what makes each distillery or blend different from its fellows.

Why this consensus? Why now? I’d suggest that there is a reaction against an industry which has for too long worshipped at the altar of efficiency. Getting more alcohol for your bucks is one thing, but is that a price worth paying if it strips away your individuality leaving us with a sleek, highly efficient industry with a homogenised product?

The shift can come in any number of ways: from efficiencies in mashing, from using the same barley variety, or the same yeast; it could come from cutting the ferment times to increase throughput, or using the same shape and size of still and then running them the same way, or through a heavy reliance on the blunt instrument of new wood (or small casks). If everyone in the world makes the same decisions then where is the individuality?

Is the convergence happening? In some places I think it is. Elsewhere, I think that distillers have seen why they have to ensure that their product is substantially different to the existing ones with a 200-year head start. In these cases they are heading out into new (or old, adapted) areas.

Whisky is fragile. Each distillery’s character is built upon a set of interrelated occurrences which are in fine balance. The subtle equilibrium which holds the whole edifice together can easily be shattered if one of those elements changes. Distilleries therefore succeed or fail because of their ability to keep this balance in place.

Whisky is a drink which is growing globally because of its diversity. That must always be its abiding principle. Everyone must be unique.

Whisky producers are visionary by their very nature. They spend every day looking to the future, forecasting what demand will be like in 10, 20, 30 years’ time. This constant crystal ball gazing shapes how they think about whisky – what flavours will consumers be craving next, what lifestyle choices will influence their spending decisions?

With the future on their minds, distillers, blenders, marketers and owners congregated at the Cotswolds distillery last week for the second World Whisky Forum, a space for sharing ideas with the common goal of developing the gloal whisky category. International producers rubbed shoulders with small ‘craft’ operations, while innovative Asian distillers shared insights with traditional Scottish blenders. With such openness, it’s hard to imagine there once was a time when distillers were forbidden from speaking to rival companies.

Developing the whisky category is not just about looking forward and predicting the future, it’s also about being cognisant – aware of what developments are occurring right now, within and without the sector.

With 13 speakers from the likes of Johnnie Walker and Irish Distillers through to New York’s Kings County and Finland’s Kyrö, the Forum was a hotbed of discussion for what trends will shape the future of whisky. The following areas were the most commonly raised, from the global growth of ‘single rye whisky’ to the death of craft.

Safe space: The World Whisky Forum is a trade-only conference for producers to share insights

Challenge everything; ignore the dogma

One of the key issues challenging Scotch whisky in particular is how to innovate sufficiently to stay relevant and appeal to whisky consumers’ changing palates, while remaining within the strict legal guidelines. However Ian Palmer, managing director of InchDairnie distillery, was resolute that the existing guidelines allow sufficient headroom for innovation. ‘The definition isn’t the problem,’ said Palmer. ‘Working within the definition takes imagination – challenge everything and everybody.’

The new Lowlands site became one of the first in Scotland to begin distilling rye (more on that later), and one of only two in the country to use a mash filter instead of a mash tun. Last year InchDairnie used seven different types of yeast, and is introducing two new strains this year. They’re all ways the distillery is experimenting with flavour while staying true to Scotch whisky’s identity, even if sometimes that boundary is blurred. ‘We’re happy to produce whiskies that taste like they should have an ‘e’ in the name,’ he said.

From Scotland’s perspective the rest of the world’s whisky producing countries seemingly bask in looser regulations that allow for greater innovation. ‘Should Scotch be worried?’ challenged moderator Dave Broom. There was a moment of reflective silence before Cotswolds head distiller Nick Franchino replied: ‘Scotch or not, if you make it badly you should be worried.’

Have courage; take risks

Similarly, having the courage to challenge the status quo was a common theme from speakers, one raised early on by Simon Coughlin’s tale of Murray McDavid’s purchase of Bruichladdich distillery in 2000. With only limited stocks of whisky and no new spirit since the mid-1990s, the team began bottling whisky from other distilleries under independent labels. ‘The fringe IB business was doing better than the Bruichladdich brand,’ he said. Realising they were in difficulty, the team was forced to do something daring. ‘We launched the Botanist gin, and it saved our bacon,’ Coughlin said. Never before had a gin been produced on Islay, but using an old still sourced from Dumbarton’s Lomond distillery, the Botanist was born. ‘We had to take the risk,’ Coughlin said.

Honesty and truthfulness

‘Today’s consumer is inquisitive, knowledgable and noisy,’ InchDairnie’s Palmer noted. ‘A thin veneer will be very quickly exposed.’ Foresight indeed from a man whose first whisky won’t be released for at least another 10 years, but it’s an insight that many speakers identified as being a cornerstone of success. ‘You need to believe in something in this industry,’ commented Coughlin. ‘If it’s all built on marketing bullshit you’ll be found out.’

The Cotswolds’ Franchino agreed. ‘There are too many gimmicks going on. When people try to weave something like that into their brand story that shouldn’t be there, it devalues it.’ Similarly, he said, releasing too many expressions in a short space of time that have no correlation to a genuine brand story is confusing for consumers. ‘If you only have one layer and someone scratches below it, you’re in trouble. You don’t have a coherent brand.’

The death of ‘craft’

‘There’s a craft distilling bubble coming if we carry on this way,’ Colin Spoelman of Kings County said. According to his presentation, just five ‘craft’ distilleries were operational in the US in 1990. ‘Now there are more distilleries in New York State than in Scotland.’ Kings County, he pointed out, is smaller than Scotland’s second-smallest distillery, Edradour. But although his operation in Brooklyn pales in size next to some of its global industry peers at the Forum, he claimed that ‘craft distilleries should just be called small distilleries.’ Every distiller and their mouser refers to itself as craft these days, even Irish Distillers’ Brian Nation, whose photograph of Midleton’s sizeable 1,500 litre ‘micro distillery’ stills generated laughter from the room.

Social terroir

There has been much talk of barley terroir, of a distillery’s sense of place, its unique water qualities and climate which contributes to maturing whisky’s flavour. Far less is said of social terroir, of the people who make it, who influence the whisky with their personalities, experiences and skill.

Every speaker spoke of the people that makes their product great. ‘Our area is important to the distillery and the quality of our whisky, but so are the people,’ said Kavalan’s Ian Chang.

Country conference: Some 60 delegates packed into the Cotswolds distillery for the Forum (Photo: Tristan Stephenson)

Age hangups will become obsolete

Greater education is already shifting consumers’ preconceptions that age equals quality, but advances in warehousing technology is likely to drive the conversation toward other signifiers of quality and flavour. Spoelman of Kings County, said: ‘Over the years the focus on age will diminish, but not entirely – the use of controlled warehousing will change it, lower the emphasis on age and allow consumers to focus on other elements.’

On the other hand, the question of how important rapid ageing technology will be in whisky’s future was raised, and very quickly shot down. ‘There are lots of processes that earn a lot of press, but it isn’t interesting to most distillers,’ Spoelman added.

Rye will be a global phenomenon

The majority of speakers at the World Whisky Forum spoke of distilling rye, and not all from countries typically associated with that style of whisky. The explosion in popularity of American rye whiskey, coupled with a resurgence in rye-based cocktails such as the Sazerac, has inspired global distilleries to give it a shot. Under current Scotch whisky legislation a rye whisky would be classed as ‘grain whisky’, but should the category continue to grow around the world a movement to establish a ‘Scotch rye’ or ‘single rye’ definition could take shape. After all, Bruichladdich’s Coughlin spoke of purchasing an adjacent farm on Islay on which to – possibly – grow a rye crop. Miika Lipiäinen and Kalle Valkonen from Finland’s Kyrö distillery are already working on the establishment of a Nordic rye and single malt rye category. Could it be just a matter of time before Scotland catches up?

Meanwhile Hiram Walker’s Don Livermore believes the future of the category won’t include questions about the content of mashbills. ‘Rye has the highest lignin content of all grains, which is the world’s most unappreciated molecule. Don’t ask me how much rye is in my whisky, ask me how much 4-ethylguaiacol it contains.’

Keep moving forward

One of the final takeaways, which not only encapsulated the mood of the Forum but spoke of an ongoing theme driving the global industry, was a need for progression. Not just from the Scotch producers, who are often – perhaps mistakenly – perceived to be behind the curve when it comes to innovation, but for world whisky as well. Not just for individual operations, but for the entire industry as one. A need to continue speaking to one another, to share ideas and collaborate. To look to other industries, take inspiration from bartenders and brewers, chocolatiers and coffee roasters (guest distilling was one, wonderfully exciting, suggestion).

Palmer said: ‘The Scotch industry is weak; they all just talk to each other and so the spiral [of knowledge] is closing in.’ InchDairnie is taking its inspiration from distilleries around the world, as well as other producers across the food and drink sector. ‘We’re even looking at the world of chocolate to see how they create flavour,’ he said.

In my folly, I once hosted a tour around Ardbeg. Among others, the party contained my mother, then 80, who had never been round a distillery before, my brother-in-law who was interested in whisky, my sister-in-law who doesn’t drink, and my (then) young niece who was more interested in trying to put a Mars bar into the mash tun than listen to her stupid uncle.

It was nothing compared to what most tour guides have to cope with on a daily basis, but it was instructive as it showed me how hard it is to pitch a tour to suit all levels of interest.

It means being geeky enough to satisfy the whisky lover, but not so far out there that you put off the newbie; it means having a talent to field ‘stupid’ questions, and trying to enthuse people who, let’s face it, are often only there because their partner/ parent likes whisky, or who only came along to the distillery because it was raining. Aye, being a tour guide is not an easy gig.

People pleasers: Tour guides must have the ability to tailor their presentations to all manner of visitor

So, the news that distilleries have invested over £500m in creating ‘world-class tourism experiences’ is welcome evidence of how whisky firms are no longer seeing the visitor centre as a place to sell shortbread and drams, but as part of their whole brand strategy.

That’s all great, but with that shift in focus comes a greater responsibility on the part of the owner to also invest in the people who are on the front line. If the number of tour guides outstrips the number of operators, so the balance shifts.

As a distiller or brand owner you have to ensure that the front of house staff are aware of every part of the process. They need to know when to engage the big guns of geekery and when to keep it light; they must have the ability to read a group of strangers and know which ones are only there because of the weather and which are a whisky club.

There is more to the job than being taught a script, it means being trained to think on your feet and being able to tell the truth and not some marketing guff created by agencies who have never stepped in the distillery, or faced the challenging demands of a tour group.

It is all very well saying that these days the visitor experience should operate on an emotional level, but the stroppy whisky geeks who want to berate you over your company’s approach to NAS will not be assuaged by your New Age vibes about ‘being’ and ‘feeling’ – they want answers and they want facts, just as the members of the coach party want to know where the toilet is.

This is a difficult and complex job and if the visitor centre is being upgraded so should the training. It is all very well investing millions in the look, but the whole experience falls flat if, in the desire to equip the distillery with all manner of bells and whistles, the brand owner forgets to pay attention to the staff and the complex job they have to do.

Distillery managers and brand ambassadors have superstar status. So should the folk who take the tours, and investment in their training should be uppermost. You can’t have a superstar chef in the kitchen but untrained front of house staff running the restaurant.

It’s not just spending more money on better facilities, or amazing merch, or distillery bottlings, it is about investing in people and training to ensure that they know the history, the process (inside out) and where the flavour in the final whisky comes from. They are the real brand ambassadors.