The Whisky Guy Blog

Whisky making is really the marriage of water, grain and yeast.  Once wed, they never part.  With such romantic pairings in the whisky, it’s no wonder that charming a charming German couple chose the Bruichladdich Distillery Still House to take their vows recently.

A whisky wedding at Bruichladdich.

Heinz and Gudrun and a handful of their close friends crowded into the Still House, along with several Bruichladdich employees.  As an added bonus, Caran was leading a tour when the wedding started, so a few extra folks from scattered places around the globe also gave their support (and their camera flashes) to the ceremony. 

Now, a whisky distillery is a relatively continuous operation.  There is no stopping a still once it gets going with spirit production.  As the happy couple exchanged vows, Neil and Dave continued to scramble under piping to turn gears and to check temperatures to make sure the stills were running properly.  Roddy came up from IT to capture the momentous occasion on digital camera.  Mary poured the whisky for the ceremony-concluding drams.  Duncan and Ella both stood by to offer the official Bruichladdich thanks.

In the back of the room sat Ruariadh, who is now retired, but first started at the distillery in 1956 and worked there for 40 years. 

The Laddie Lasses congratulate the lucky Japanese tourist who took home the bridal bouquet.

Ardbeg Distillery sits at the end of a two-lane highway that shrinks to a single-track road.  Those willing to continue on that road find it to be narrow and bumpy with steep hills, blind turns and an otherworldly landscape.  It’s appropriate that Ardbeg is the last stop before you venture on, as the whisky is among Islay’s heartiest, with a big peat punch to keep you company along the way.

Ardbeg blends the classic with the future.

Distillery Manager Michael Heads came to Ardbeg from Jura two years ago with one goal in mind: don’t mess with a good thing.  Ardbeg may not be the best known of Islay’s malts, but it is a dandy.  The distillery was closed in the early 1980s and then was on and off again for a period in the mid-1990s. Only in the past decade or so has it seen regular production.  And that production has increased tremendously as more people discover and appreciate the malt.

Ardbeg’s biggest fans are The Committee, an official club of Ardbeg enthusiasts from around the world.  They are treated to Committee-only releases and have input, according to Michael, on Ardbeg’s bottlings.  After all, if the distillery’s biggest fans love a release, or don’t, they are probably pretty reflective of the buying public.  It’s a personal market research team.

That road I told you about is Islay’s main road, running through Bruichladdich, Bowmore and Port Ellen.  It passes Ardbeg’s neighbors Lagavulin and Laphroaig before letting you jump off at the distillery.  The site is lovely, though it’s so close to the ocean you feel as though a big wave could douse the warehouses with saltwater at any moment. 

The old maltings area has been turned into the fantastic Old Kiln café, which serves up some fabulous lunches.  The café and attached gift shop/tasting room are a great combination of contemporary design and classic distillery structure.  The cuisine is also wonderful, and many people make the trek to the end of the main road just to enjoy a healthy and hearty lunch.

With the on and off again production Ardbeg had in the 1990s, their younger whisky expressions were limited for a number of years.  Five years ago, however, they had enough quantity and quality from their turn of the century rebirth to bottle a six-year-old they aptly called, “Very Young.”  Next was an eight-year-old, “Still Young” followed by the nine-year-old, “Almost There.”  In each, you can experience the melding of peat, fruit-tinged spirit and wood.  The offerings reach their apex (for now?) with the 10-year-old “Renaissance,” which I find to be a simply exciting dram. 

When you continue down that single track road past Ardbeg, you’re stepping back in time.  You come across the 8^thCentury Kildalton Celtic Cross.  There are a couple of 4,000 year-old standing stones.  If you stop at Ardbeg before you go down that road, you’re taking a bit of the past with you, as Michael thinks Islay’s peaty malts owe their heritage to the smoky flavors of the first whiskies made a short hop away, in Ireland, more than 1,000 years ago. 

However, I suggest stopping at Ardbeg after returning from that single track trek.  For as much as Ardbeg owes its flavors to the past, the improvisations Michael and his team give to that ancient art will certainly continue to propel their whiskies well into the 21^st Century.

I spent the other day in Bruichladdich’s bottling hall.  They are one of the few distilleries that bottle their own whisky, which allows Bruichladdich to be highly innovative in their release selections.  It’s economically viable for them to run small runs of a particular bottling, as they can do the label and, if necessary, bottling change overs pretty quickly.

In chatting with the labeling folks, I was made aware of the demands that different countries place on alcohol labels.  And no two demands are ever the same.  The regulations for each country is different to the point where even a minute labeling change could be necessary, not only from country to country, but in some cases from province to province.

As far as I can tell, based on my work in the political realm on researching interstate and international alcohol laws, the only real reason for these differences is to give bureaucratic agencies something to do and another revenue stream.  In the U.S., these antiquated laws mean that consumers pay more for a product than they should, simply because there are unnecessarily regulated steps that are in place to distance the consumer from the distiller, brewer or vintner.

The U.N. is trying to solve unrest in the Middle East, nuclear concerns in Iran and North Korea, and deep recession throughout the world.  International powers-that-be can’t even come up with a universal labeling system for alcohol (for example, Americans need to be warned that alcohol could cause health problems, while the rest of the world seems to figure that out without having a label on their bottle).  How can we expect them to stop wars when they can’t even figure out stickers?

For those of you who have never been in a whisky warehouse, let me try to help you visualize.  Imagine having a can of Coke in your refrigerator.  Now, fill every shelf in your refrigerator with cans of Coke.  And while you’re at it, put a few hundred cans in your bedroom.  A few thousand in your living room.  Another couple of thousand in your garage.  A few thousand more in your basement.  The phone rings.  It’s your friend who says, “Remember that can of Coke I had you store at your place, the one that I wrote my name on?  Can you find it for me?”

Cask management is a complex aspect of distillery operations.

Casks are stored like needles in a carefully mapped haystack.  Warehouses are separated along a distillery site and in some cases are even miles away.  The separation is done in part for risk reduction purposes: if some kind of accident befalls one warehouse, there will still be ample whisky stored elsewhere.  It’s also done to balance out storage of particular spirits.  The whisky in the wood is affected by the external conditions in which its stored.  A cask stored close to the floor in a damp warehouse will affect the whisky inside it differently than a cask stored 50 feet high in a dry warehouse.

The risk reduction element means that casks of the same spirit (whether it be the same based on barley used in the mash or the type of wood its aged in) can be separated among those numerous warehouses.  So, when the call comes in that an 8-year-old whisky is ready to be vatted and bottled, there is a chance those casks will need to be retrieved from several places.  This makes the job of the warehouse crew a bit more challenging.  They may have to go to more than one warehouse.  They may have to pull some casks from ground level and climb up four stories to reach others. 

The most challenging part of cask storage and retrieval at a place like Bruichladdich comes from casks owned by individuals.  Bruichladdich and several other distilleries sell private casks to individuals who use them as investments or private bottlings.  When one of these individuals calls and wants to taste the progress of the whisky in their cask or have it bottled, it’s up to the warehouse to find and retrieve it.  Meticulous records direct the crew to the right cask, but it’s their often intense physical and logistic efforts that end up bringing the cask to the light of day for the first time in years.

The next time you have that “Limited Bottling” of your favorite malt, or you stop into your local liquor store and they have their own label on a single cask offering, know that more than water, grain and yeast went into that spirit.  Some complex storage plans and raw physical effort helped bring that whisky to your lips.  Raise a toast to the unheralded folks who work this side of the whisky business day-in and day-out.

For weeks, I’ve been walking the hills in Islay, exploring ancient ruins, enjoying incredible views of the ocean and other islands (including the big island of Ireland) and taking in the freshest air imaginable.  The arduous strolls have been great for my lower body conditioning.  My challenge during this time has been to balance that out with some good upper body work, aside from push-ups and seated dips.  Well, I found the answer in, what else? Whisky.  And no, it’s not through kicking back dozens of drams every night.

For the past two days, I’ve been working in Bruichladdich’s warehouse.  There, I have

Casks being filled at Bruichladdich.

helped fills casks and, more importantly, moved them to their temporary resting places where they will sit for several years or longer.  In that little cask world, this feisty new spirit goes off to school and gains character under the headmaster tutelage of the bourbon, sherry or other wine that the cask held previously.  It’s a wonderful self-contained world where spirit, wood, air and that bourbon/wine influence transmogrify into whisky.

I haven’t spent much time in a warehouse in recent years, but when I was in college and just after, I had plenty of factory and assembly line jobs.  I always really liked the warehouse guys, no matter which company I was at.  They were fun, loose, had great senses of humor and really enjoyed being in the warehouse.  The guys at Bruichladdich carry on that tradition.

Their good-natured attitude, however, does not detract from the seriousness they devote to the job.  They’re the ones responsible for casking and vatting the whiskies, and most importantly, keeping an eye on the casks, day after day, year after year.  Without their care, little leaks could lead to ruin; mislabeled casks could disappear among thousands of others, much to the dismay of private holders; and mishandled casks could smash into people or objects, causing serious injury or loss of important inventory.