How do you make good whisky? In fact, what are the ingredients of whisky? If you answered barley, water, and yeast, then you were correct. And yet, there’s so much more…
There is a word that goes hand-in-hand with whisky making in Scotland. Many in the industry would suggest it’s the most important ingredient of all, but you won’t read it in whisky books or hear it mentioned during a distillery tour. The word? Consistency.
It’s something that some entities don’t focus on too much. For example, The Scotch Malt Whisky Society celebrates the inconsistency of whisky. Two similar casks could be filled with spirit from the same distillation run and sit side by side in the warehouse together for 12 years – only to emerge as two completely different beasts come bottling time. For the Society, that inconsistency is gold! It means they (potentially) get to bottle two casks from the same distillery, at the same age, and yet showcase two different flavours. The diversity and inconsistency between casks is precisely what bottlers of single casks seek out.
However, for those at the distillery, inconsistency is a dirty word. The stillman is charged with the task of producing exactly the same style of spirit for each run, so that the distillery’s house style is consistent. Blenders demand consistency. It makes sense: Whether we’re talking about a blend like Johnnie Walker, or a single malt like Highland Park 12yo, the brands – via their master blenders – need to ensure that each bottling production run tastes the same as the one before it, and this is the blender’s primary objective. How would you feel if you bought a bottle of your favourite malt from your local outlet, got home and poured yourself a dram, only to find that it tasted nothing like the familar style you were expecting? The very reason blends and blenders came into existence in the first place was to iron out the inconsistencies in whiskies at that time and to produce a consistent product that consumers could rely on. Consistency is the norm, and it essential for the success and endurance of any brand of Scotch.
For this reason then, much of the whisky production process in Scotland is now automated. Processes that might once have been left up to subjective human input or control, thus resulting in variability, have become mechanised or computer controlled. For example, the hot water that is mixed with the malt in the mashtun will now always strike at the same temperature each time. The quantity of yeast and the volume of wash filled into the washback does not change. The charging of the stills, the distilling temperature, and the taking of the middle cut (i.e. when to turn on/off the foreshots and feints) is either determined by a timer or by a flow-rate meter to ensure the same result everytime. The whole production at a typical distillery in Scotland now runs such that every batch of spirit is as near identical to the previous batch as they can possibly achieve. The only things left to chance or nature that could impact the distillate will be seasonal changes that might influence, say, the quality and yield of the barley, or the temperatures in the tunroom and stillhouse. (Of course, a good degree of this control is subsequently lost once the spirit is transferred into the cask – the spirit is then at the mercy of the quality of the wood and the location and manner in which it is stored).
All this came to the fore recently when I was discussing whisky production with an industry figure much closer to home. Tim Duckett is the man behind Heartwood Whisky in Tasmania. Heartwood is an independent bottler and Tim has casks of whisky from several of the Tasmanian distilleries in his possession. Through his relationship with the local distillers, his knowledge of the production process, and his own personal experience with the casks he is busy maturing and bottling, Tim has formed the opinion that there are, in fact, four key ingredients that influence whisky, and our enjoyment of it:
- The personality of the distiller / distillery
- The science and the equipment (controllable factors – the still, the yeast-type, the known chemistry, etc)
- Alchemy / black art (uncontrollable factors, i.e. season, vintage, God’s touch, the unknown)
- The humidity / temperature / environment in which it is consumed.
These points may seem cheeky or trite but, on reflection, he’s 100% right.
When it comes to Australian distilleries, neither their size nor their production methods and equipment facilitate automation. Everything is much more “hands on” and, as such, the personality of the distiller comes into play. Tim used to notice tangible differences in the taste of the spirit off the stills at Lark Distillery when Bill Lark was at the controls, as opposed to the taste of the spirit when Kristy Booth was at the helm. They each imparted their own fingerprints on the distillate, and hence their personality – how long, hard, hot and fast they drive the still, and what they’re looking for – comes through in the spirit. Not to mention that distilleries themselves have their own personality, and this comes out in their whiskies and their releases. (For example, compare the quirky whiskies and releases from Bruichladdich or Benriach in recent years, compared with the more staid expressions from, say, Macallan).
As for the science and the equipment, there are some things you can’t avoid. A still with a tall, slender neck will only let the lighter alcohols rise and be captured, and will encourage reflux in the still’s body. In contrast, a short, squat still will be less discriminating, resulting in a robust, oily spirit. And hence, the house style of any distillery has much to do with the distillate that the still’s design will inherently produce. When New World Whisky distillery (producer of Starward) set up in Melbourne a few years ago, they very deliberately modelled the shape of their stills on those of Macallan, in order to replicate that spirit’s oily and full-flavoured style.
As you’ll no doubt have heard or read elsewhere, as much as 60-70% of a whisky’s final flavour comes from the cask, and so one can instantly transform and dictate a whisky’s style by choosing the type of cask to mature it in. Ex-bourbon barrels will typically deliver vanilla and citrus; ex-sherry casks can impart spice, dried fruits, and tannins. Many Australian distilleries are using ex-wine barrels, giving a richness and sweetness to their spirits.
It’s the black art and alchemy of maturation that will continue to be the magical ingredient in whisky. Notwithstanding the last point about distillers choosing the cask type, as a whisky slumbers for 10, 15, 18 years (whatever), the spirit is at the mercy of natural interactions with the wood and the environment – things that are beyond human control.
Climate and environment invariably play their part. Scotland’s cool, damp warehouses encourage slow maturation and modest losses to evaporation. In contrast, Australia’s hotter, drier climate means maturation times are much less, and distillers need to keep a keen eye on evaporation to ensure the angels don’t steal too much. (As an interesting aside, the climate in Kentucky causes the water to evaporate before the alcohol does, and so bourbon whiskies actually increase in ABV during their maturation, whereas Scotland’s whiskies reduce in ABV. Some Australian warehouses are also experiencing increasing ABV’s during maturation). With our local environment here, it is unlikely we will ever see a commercial release of a 20yo Australian whisky, because the spirit simply won’t survive in the cask long enough, due to our high evaporation rates and the accelerated maturation.
Compare the Jim Beam warehouse in Kentucky on the left with the Glenfiddich warehouse in Speyside on the right.
And, picking up on the last item, the environment in which we consume a whisky tremendously impacts our enjoyment and assessment of it. A whisky can taste terrific in a given time and place, yet sometimes that very same whisky can seem ordinary if consumed in different circumstances or a different environment. (Take a bottle of your favourite whisky and pour a dram whilst in Tasmania during winter. Try the same dram six months later in summer in the far north of Queensland. Do you think you’ll perceive it as tasting the same, and will you enjoy it equally?) Similarly, a whisky enjoyed in good company with your best friends strangely tastes different when you’re drinking it alone.
What’s exciting about Australian whiskies at the moment is that the industry has reached a stage where we’ve been at it long enough to understand our local ingredients, our local processes, and our local environment. The situation is now such that we can’t (or don’t need to) imitate Scottish “best practice”. Scottish best practice states that the casks should mature in a cool, dark environment, and Aussie distillers try and replicate this to a certain extent. However, one of the best Australian whiskies I’ve ever had, courtesy of Tim Duckett, was from a cask that started out maturing in the traditional manner, but was then – inspired by sheer experimentation – transferred to a hot tin shed over a summer. The whisky – which according to Duckett was not maturing well or displaying any signs of being any better than average – suddenly transformed over a few months of being “tortured” (his phrase!) and the end result, which was subsequently bottled as the Mount Wellington release, was a sensational whisky that defied the rules and impressed plenty of palates. Subsequent casks that Duckett played around with in the shed showed similar transformations, and these went on to be the Heartwood bottlings of legend (e.g. Release the Beast and the Convict series releases).
I doubt there’s a whisky-making textbook on the planet that would advocate mistreating casks in a hot tin shed in the Australian bush, but the results speak for themselves, and underscore that black art and alchemy will forever be a key ingredient in whisky. Oh, and don’t forget consistency.
Cheers,
AD
PS: You might also enjoy our “explainer articles”…
The complete guide to oak, casks, & whisky maturation
The complete guide to non chill-filtered whisky
The complete guide to peat and peated whisky
The whisky lover’s complete guide to sherry
