Distillery Visit: Glenkinchie

I'm probably the wrong person to report on a visit to Glenkinchie. I'm no fan of the whisky, and I don't much care for Diageo either. These caveats aside, there were aspects of the visit that I enjoyed.

(I should say, by the way, that I completely failed to get any good pictures. Diageo, of course, have a blanket ban on photography in production areas or warehousing, but that aside, I failed. I took the distillery bus from Edinburgh, which gives you very little time to wander about. And Glenkinchie is tucked into a wee valley which doesn't offer many telephoto opportunities.)

The first pleasant surprise of the tour was meeting the guide, an ex-colleague from Oddbins days. She knew of old my penchant for pedantry in the nth degree, and was very tolerant of my questions. And, as is nearly always the case with Diageo, the tour script was factually accurate, concise, and very clear. It was great to see the huge wash still (30,963 litres—biggest in Scotland), which hinted at the historical role of Lowland distilleries as volume producers of low quality spirit.

I also enjoyed the tasting at the end of the tour. The bar at Glenkinchie has a very good selection of Distillers Editions and Flora & Fauna bottlings, which isn't always the case. After trying the Glenkinchie 12 (workmanlike) and Glenkinchie Distillers Edition (decent sherry casks, no spirit character) I had a Benrinnes 15 (always a pleasure, at least until 2020 or thereabouts, when the last of the spirit produced by partial triple distillation is finished) and a Lagavulin Distillers Edition.

I always think of Lagavulin as the malt whisky equivalent of Guinness in a crap pub, so to extend the metaphor, Lagavulin Distillers Edition is like going into a pub and finding unpasteurised Guinness, or Guinness Foreign Extra, on tap. In other words, a surprise and a delight.

On the down side, the warehouse we were shown seemed awfully Potemkin village. There was a remarkable absence of dust, dirt, or Baudoinia compniacensis. And when I looked up I could see plenty of daylight through the gaps between the floorboards, which rather implies that the upper warehouse floors are empty.

I also happened across a couple of interesting snippets. The first of these was a Heath Robinson print, about an imagined redesign of the Johnny Walker bottle.

I'm a huge fan of Heath Robinson, so this made me grin. (can you see me grinning in the reflected image?)

The second was this manufacturer's plate on a filter (for worts, I suppose).

Royal Letters Patent

Magnien's

Filtre Rapide

No.2

P.A.Magnien

22-23 Great Tower Street London

Manufactured Aboad

I don't know why, but to me words like these from the past have a very strong appeal.

In summary, this is a great tour for visitors to Scotland. You can be picked up from Edinburgh and be back in the city centre in an afternoon, having enjoyed an imformative trip at a pretty distillery, plus a few acceptable-to-decent drams. For the seasoned malt drinker (as for me), Glenkinchie's main appeal is to add a stamp to your Classic Malts passport.

Distillery Visit: Dalwhinnie

On one of those rare glorious days when the sun is blazing down from a cerulean sky and Scotland seems more beautiful than any other place on Earth, I made the three hour train journey to Dalwhinnie.

The distillery sits just to the north of the village, clearly visible with its whitewashed walls and neat wooden worm tubs. It's a compact distillery, rebuilt in the late 1930s after a disastrous fire, and it feels like it could be the original Victorian buildings. The large impressive worm tubs at the front of the distillery have just been renewed in 2015 and add to the spick and span feel. It's a Diageo distillery, so no photography, which is a bit of a shame, as the mash tun is housed in what was a malt kiln, so there's a fantastic view of Charles Doig's roof from the inside.

Diageo also means a tightly scripted tour, but I was very lucky to have an enthusiastic guide who was happy to address my many supplementary questions. The guide gave a very thorough explanation of the whisky making process, and talked about Dalwhinnie's now abandoned experiment with shell & tube condensers, and how worm tubs are an essential component of the Dalwhinnie character. It was also interesting to learn that Dalwhinnie controls fermentation times by raising the temperature to kill the yeast.

The tun room has one 60,000 litre full lauter mash tun, with the rakes set high so as not to disturb the cereal bed, thus leading to a clear worts. There are six wooden washbacks, which ferment for about 60 hours, to produce a wash of about 9% alcohol.

The stills are large, lantern style, and they are worked hot, so that the spirit vapours don't get too much copper contact.

Dalwhinnie produces about 1 million litres a year. Most of this is stored elsewhere, with only a few thousand casks held onsite, in both racking and dunnage warehouses.

The recipe for Dalwhinnie, so to speak, is to make a fruity wash, distil it quite fast in big stills which don't give much reflux, and cool it rapidly with extremely cold water. The result is a new make spirit which is fruity, but also has a sulphur note. Consequently, the spirit needs long ageing, so as to reduce the sulphur to a trace, a suggestion of meatiness and a fuller body.

After the tour I did the Friends tasting, which includes five different expressions of Dalwhinnie, plus the new make spirit. I would sum up Dalwhinnie thusly:

* Key flavours: toffee citrus(lemon, with a little bitter orange), honey, grist

* Dalwhinnie really doesn't take water very well.

* The variations on the basic theme of the 15 Year Old don't really go anywhere very exciting. The Distillers Edition is allegedly sherried, but you would hardly know. The two outstanding drams were the 25 Year Old (which cost north of £300), and a 1991 cask sample which was delicious, but where the cask character was very dominant. (This is not necessarily a bad thing, but to approach perfection a whisky ought to meld a distinctive spirit with good wood in a way which lets both shine without either dominating)

I had quite a bit of time to kill before getting the train home, so I went for a wander to the south end of the village. It was an absolute belter of a day, and I ended up getting slightly sunburnt, but it was worth it. Just look at that beautiful, beautiful view:

Click on the picture to get the big version in all its sunny glory

Distilllery Visit: Tamdhu

Tamdhu is a Speyside distillery which was built by a cross-industry group of investors in 1897 just as the late Victorian whisky boom was peaking.

The new owners, Ian Macleod Distillers, took over two years ago in 2011. The brand has now been relaunched, and to mark the occasion they invited me to lunch at the distillery (there might have been a few other people there too).

Tamdhu was built to provide malt for blending purposes. Indeed, it wasn't released as a single until 1976. And even in more recent times the previous owners, Edrington, didn't really do much to promote Tamdhu as a malt whisky, which is understandable seeing as they have the distractions of Macallan and Highland park to play with.

They did, however, pursue a policy of filling the spirit into sherry barrels, which means that the newly launched 10 Year Old  is 100% sherry matured, a rare distinction amongst core whisky brands these days.

We are told by Leonard Russell, managing director of Ian Macleod, that as of 2013 there are ten years of sherry cask stock on hand, that the policy of filling exclusively into sherry barrels is to be continued, and that Tamdhu will be repositioning itself upmarket.

It's interesting to note that Tamdhu fills at 69% rather than the industry standard 63.5% - perhaps as a way of economising on the use of ever more expensive sherry barrels.

Not the prettiest distillery in the world

Distillery manager Sandy Coutts explaining how Tamdhu does things

Some of the stills - I couldn't fit them all into the shot!

After the presentation we were shown round the distillery, which isn't open to visitors at the moment. Perhaps as a consequence of that, the place isn't quite as spruced up as, for example, Glenfiddich. To my mind, that's not necessarily a bad thing. Distilleries are busy factories, and if they're sometimes a little worn round the edges, never mind - as long as the whisky tastes good.

At the end of the tour we were led through a tasting of the new ten year old expression, along with a limited edition (how limited I'm not sure. Certainly we won't be able to stock it in the shop).

The Ten Year Old is a good solid example of sherried whisky. The nose has brown sugar, raisins, sherry, and a sweet toffee note. The palate carries on from the nose, adding a generous dose of beery malt to the sherry, raisins, and brown sugar. What I find most interesting is that the sherry character seems qualitatively different to expressions of Highland Park and Macallan I have tasted recently Different, and to my taste, better.

This difference in sherry character, I believe, can only be due to Ian Macleod's cask selection criteria, since these barrels were filled by Edrington. To speculate, I'd suggest that since there isn't the same sort of demand for Tamdhu as for Highland Park or Macallan, Ian Macleod are able to reject lower quality barrels which Edrington would be forced to use.

(I'm well aware that I'm comparing apples with oranges here. Nevertheless)

However it came about, I like the sherry character of Tamdhu 10. It's a tasty drop; quite middle of the road, but very well put together in a way that will have wide appeal. And it looks like it's going to be a pretty decent price too - somewhere in the mid to upper thirties I believe.

Well done to Tamdhu for producing this tasty malt, and well done to Ian Macleod for not messing about with it. Long may they continue.