Classics: Scotch

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Bunnahabhain | Wining about whisky | Accommodating Distilleries

A Century of Change?
by Gavin D. Smith

We have all toured Scotch whisky distilleries and heard the guide blithely say “Of course, nothing’s really changed here in a hundred years.”

Such is the emphasis placed on heritage and continuity by the industry’s marketing executives that it is almost possible to be lulled into the belief that this is true. But wake up and be cynical! In point of fact, just about everything has changed.

Firstly, of course, one hundred years ago there were no distillery guides. The very idea that members of the public might wish to part with their hard-earned money in order to be shown around what was essentially a factory would have made our Victorian forebears laugh out loud. Changes in whisky-making have been social as well as chemical and technological.

The tourists of a century ago would not only have been uninterested in distilleries but they would also have been unwelcome had they attempted to visit. That peculiar distillery-bagging London journalist Alfred Barnard, with his obsession for the dimensions of everything and the flavor of nothing, was no doubt tolerated as a harmless English eccentric by distillery managers and proprietors—who still existed as individual entities in those days. However, even as late as the 1970s, one manager on Speyside would respond to polite requests to see around his distillery with the simple phrase “Bugger off!”

Reduction in Force
Staying with the social rather than the scientific side of the business, one of the most profound changes in distilleries during the past century has been the reduction in manpower and an associated increase in the automation of distilling processes. In 1964, Mortlach distillery in Dufftown employed around 60 men. Today, production is in the hands of one person per shift. Inevitably, then, much of the human interaction, the fellowship and banter of the job, has gone. It is difficult to banter with a computer console.

The first significant reduction in staff numbers came with the closure of most on-site maltings during the 1960s. This was a boom time for Scottish distilling, and many distilleries were either rebuilt with increased capacity or greatly enlarged. The result was that the old floor maltings simply could not supply enough malt, and large-scale, dedicated maltings servicing a number of distilleries were developed.

They malted to individual distillery specifications in terms of peating levels, but a greater degree of overall consistency resulted. The days when one week’s batch of malt was much more heavily peated than the next, because the wind was blowing in a certain direction and not drawing the ‘reek’ clear of the pagoda, became a thing of the past.

Inevitably, when hands-on, human control played a larger part in distilling practices, there was always greater scope for inconsistency. Professionals would view this with horror, but to those whisky aficionados who thrive on the variable nuances on the product it can be a positive rather than a negative factor. Smart distillers like Bruichladdich on Islay have picked up and run with the idea that their drinkers are attracted to the quirky, the unusual, and the inconsistent, and they boast that their distillery is controlled not by computers, but by human beings. However, they remain in the minority.

Whole Grain Goodness
So, apart from increased automation, how has distilling changed during the past hundred years, and how have those changes affected the character of the whisky itself?

Let’s start at the beginning. According to Bill Lumsden, master distiller for Glenmorangie plc, “There would probably have been a greater element of smokiness in malt whisky than is the case today. Most malting was done in distillery floor maltings, and the malt would be dried over a fire of some sort. There wouldn’t be any of the electric fans or other equipment they have in maltings now, either.”

The barley itself has changed, too. Dr. Harry Riffkin heads the Fife-based firm of Tatlock & Thomson, analytical and consulting chemists, which specializes in advising the Scotch whisky industry. He notes that “Modern malting varieties of barley brought huge increases of yields. For a long time Golden Promise [introduced in 1966] was the favorite, then Triumph came into favor. In the mid-1980s, you were getting something like 390 liters of alcohol per ton of barley, but that had improved from around 330/340 liters. Triumph took yields up to 410, and it’s now possible to get 420 liters from modern varieties, given a good growing season.”

After malting comes mashing, and shorter mashing times have been introduced in many distilleries for the sake of efficiency. Efficiency may come at a price, however, and alter the character of the spirit ultimately distilled.

“Scotch whisky fermentation is not a sterile process,” explains Riffkin. “What happens is that the yeast predominates during the first 36 to 48 hours, producing most of the alcohol, and so often fermentation is stopped then in the interests of maximization of throughput. However, if you leave it for longer—upwards of 96 hours—lactic acid bacteria develop, which give you desirable complex flavors. If the lactic acid fermentation is allowed to optimize, you will get fruit flavors like pear-drops, banana, and apple aromas. These are all chemical esters, and add to the complexity of the new make.”

Fermentation is driven by yeast, and as Bill Lumsden observes, “You have high quality cultured yeast today, and the quality, consistency, and lack of infection during fermentation is now far better. In the old days, fermentation performance would be variable at best and appalling at worst. The old yeasts were less efficient and less stable. You used to get bacterial infection and wild yeasts, but it’s a long time since I’ve smelt a sour washback in a distillery.”

Still the Same—Not
When it comes to the actual process of distillation, the principal difference between a century ago and today concerns the method of firing the stills and condensing the vapor produced back into liquid form.

Broadly speaking, direct firing—whether with coal, gas, or oil—is hotter than steam heating, and ‘toasts’ the distillate, giving, it is argued, a different flavor profile to the same wash. Old stillmen will tell you that the whisky produced using direct firing was heavier, possessed of more ‘guts’ than that made using indirect firing.

Another change in many distilleries has been the replacement of wooden worm tubs with more efficient and less expensive ‘shell and tube’ condensers. The whisky made using worm tubs is generally heavier in body and more pungent because it has comparatively little copper contact. Worm tubs have been retained at a number of distilleries where the spirit has a ‘sulfury’ and ‘meaty’ character, most notably those owned by Diageo, but at many others the loss of worm tubs has subtly but decisively altered the nature of the whisky produced.

It may be argued that only when the spirit is in the cask does the real business of creating a great drink truly begin. It is often claimed that what happens after the new spirit leaves the stills is more important than everything that has gone before, and some distillers will insist that the cask contributes up to seventy-five per cent of the whisky’s final character. While it may be argued that some of the changes to the whisky-making regime during the past century have not necessarily led to ‘better’ spirit, wood management is one area where we can say with some confidence that change has generally been positive.

Bill Lumsden notes that, “One big change is that malt whiskies at that time would not have been matured in bourbon barrels. They were first introduced simply because they were available, but now they are the wood of choice for many distillers. They let the natural ‘house’ character show through.

“It’s highly likely that old refill barrels or, more likely, sherry barrels would have been used a hundred years ago,” he continued, “perhaps with claret and Burgundy casks, too. Because of the influence of the sherry, I think you’d find malts were much more ‘samey’ than they are now. There would be a much lower level of understanding of what wood does to whisky during maturation. They wouldn’t realize why it was important and some very poor casks would undoubtedly have been used.”

Whisky in the House
If the casks themselves have changed, so too have maturation practices down the decades. Traditional dunnage warehouses, usually constructed of stone, with an earth or cinder floor, feature casks stacked three high on wooden runners. Due to constraints of space, large, multi-storey warehouses have been constructed in more recent times. They are fitted out with steel racks to hold casks, up to twelve rows high, closely packed together. For ease of operation, palletization has also been introduced in many warehouses. Here casks are stacked not on their sides, as tradition has dictated, but on their ends on wooden pallets, up to six high. This facilitates handling by forklifts.

Compared to modern racked or palletized facilities, traditional dunnage warehouses have fewer temperature variations due to their stone and slate roof construction. In other words, they are better insulated. Racked warehouses tend to be prone to greater seasonal variations of temperature, but there are also temperature differences between casks stored close to the ground and those stored near to the roof. This is because maturation is fastest in the warmest area of a modern warehouse, which is invariably the highest part.

There is also less circulation of air when casks are closely packed on pallets, stacked on their ends. Whyte & Mackay’s master blender Richard Patterson observes that those casks right at the center in palletized warehouses might ideally require an extra six months to a year to mature fully, because there is less evaporation from them. Whether they always get it in an era when the accountant is king remains a matter of conjecture.

Paterson is quite clear about the way in which he likes to have his single malts matured. “I think that in damp warehouses whisky becomes more mature, softer, the rough edges are broken down. In dry warehouses, the whisky can remain a bit sharper, hotter, and retain a degree of immaturity for longer.”

Home Spirit
Today, more and more spirit is tankered away from its place of distillation and filled into casks at some remote warehousing complex, usually in the Scottish Central Belt. This is efficient, since it does away with the need for on-site warehouse squads, and allows whisky stocks to be concentrated in a small number of easily-accessible venues.

But is something lost when whisky is not matured in the surroundings in which it was created, as would usually have been the case a century ago? Is an Islay malt matured in Central Scotland notably different from one matured at the island distillery in which it was created?

Grant Carmichael is a former general manager for the Distillers Company Ltd and United Distillers, and lives in retirement on Islay. Grant reckons that, “if you mature it on the island you’ll get a more mellow whisky at the end of the day. Mature it on the dry east coast of the mainland, for example, a much drier climate than here, you’ll get a greater evaporation, so the volume comes down, but the strength remains high, so it can be quite sharp. Whereas on Islay, you don’t lose the same in evaporation because of the damp, salty air, and the salty air helps, let’s be honest. It’s breathing in some moisture surrounding these warehouses down by the shore, and this is what gives all these south coast distilleries their saltiness. It’s from the air.”

Bill Lumsden declares, “I’d love to be able to do a vertical tasting of Glenmorangies going back a century, one for each decade, but unfortunately we don’t have any really old ones, so it remains an impossible dream. All I can do, because of that, is to speculate on the likely differences. Single malts in those days would be very variable. There would be next to no consistency or quality control. You wouldn’t get the smoothness you get now, it would be much fierier, I think. Overall, I’d say that the industry has done a great job of trying to maintain the heritage of whisky-making while at the same time introducing changes which offer a far better product.”

Having concluded that very little in malt whisky making is actually the same as it was a century ago, it has to be said that most of the Scotch whisky consumed at that time would have been drunk in blended form anyway, unless you happened to be fortunate enough to live in the Scottish Highlands or close to a distillery.

And how have blended whiskies changed during the last hundred years? Well, that, as they say, is another story…

Other Scotch Classics:
Bunnahabhain | Wining about whisky | Accommodating Distilleries