Whisky
Page 7
In the spirit-receiving room is a glass case known as the spirit safe where the specific gravity of the distillate is tested. The first portion of the second distillate is whisky and is passed into the spirit receiver; the second, known as feints, contains alcohol in considerable proportion and passes into the low wines receiver where it is mixed with the next charge of low wines for re-distillation.6
The finished whisky flows into a spirit vat in the spirit store and is poured into wine-saturated casks where it will mature. The function of these casks—they are generally sherry casks—is often misunderstood. They do not impart qualities to the whisky which it did not possess before, although the action of a saturated cask may be to conceal, under a strong, imported, winey flavour, some defects in an inferior whisky. But the casks give colour to whisky, which in its native state is a wholly colourless liquid.7 Why this austere achromatism of whisky should be unpopular is not easily to be explained. It may be that the unearthly pallor of the pure and fiery spirit strikes terror into the heart of man, as the whiteness of the whale alarmed Captain Ahab and his ship’s company. (But why, then, does no one protest against the colourlessness of gin?) It may be that whisky was originally a ‘doctored’ spirit, containing in addition to malt distillate, spices and other extraneous flavouring and colouring matter. It may be that the idea of drinking whisky made solely from malt or grain is quite modern. There is, indeed, some evidence for a popular, as distinct from a learned, taste for spiced usquebaugh.
In George Smith’s A Compleat Body of Distilling, published early in the eighteenth century, there is a recipe for ‘Fine Usquebaugh’.8 It contains six gallons of proof molasses-spirit, six gallons of proof rectify’d spirit, and a whole gorgeous East of condiments— mace, cloves, nuts, cinnamon, ginger, coriander seed, cubebs, raisins, dates, liquorice, best English saffron, and Lisbon sugar. Clearly the ingenious Mr. Smith was only providing a home-made substitute for usquebaugh, but he could hardly have included spices unless he were seeking to imitate flavours which could hardly exist in an unadulterated whisky. His inclusion of saffron is also significant, for this would give a colour resembling that of modern whisky. In the North and the West, where spices were hard to come by, pure whisky, deriving its flavour from moss-water, peat and barley malt and from nothing else, first came into being and its high qualities were first recognized. But the prejudices of the Lowland and English market had to be considered, and so (we may conjecture) dyed whisky was manufactured. To this day Highlanders do not exhibit the aversion from colourless whisky that is so common among Lowlanders and Englishmen. (And, it may be observed in passing, fluid caramel or paxarette is frequently added to give whisky the complexion which it is supposed to derive from residence in sherry-casks.)9
It is not to be thought, however, that the wine-casks do nothing more to the whisky than give it a tint. The wine-soaked wood of the casks absorbs various insoluble bodies which would otherwise mar the flavour of the matured whisky.10
The manufacture of Irish whisky closely resembles that of Scotch except that, instead of barley malt, a mixture of malted and unmalted barley, wheat, oats, or rye, is mashed together. The diastase in the malt is sufficient to cause the breaking down of the starch in the unmalted grain into sugars, the subsequent conversion into alcohol being performed by yeast, as before. The process of distilling is carried out in pot stills, whereas the Scotch grain whiskies are made in patent stills.
Cameronbridge Distillery was established by John Haig in 1824. Today, operated by Diageo, it is the largest operation of its kind in Europe
The first patent-still to come into wide use was that invented about 1826 by Robert Stein11 of the celebrated Scottish family of whisky distillers. At that time there were 114 distilleries in Scotland, of which five were making for the English market. All of these were owned by the Stein family or by three firms of the name of Haig. Stein speeded up the working of the still by bringing steam into contact with the wort. The idea was developed later in the famous patent-still of Mr. Aeneas Coffey of the Dock Distillery, Dublin. This was invented in 1830 and replaced Stein’s patent. Coffey’s still consists of two columns, the analyser and the rectifier. In the first of these, previously heated wort is passed downwards over a series of perforated copper plates, and meets an upward current of steam which carries off the alcohol from the wort. This is condensed at the bottom of the rectifier (the second column) on another series of perforated plates, this time cool plates, where it is collected in two portions, an upper consisting of more volatile alcohol and a lower known as hot feints. By this type of still it is possible to produce in one continuous operation a spirit containing 95 per cent. of alcohol. Coffey’s still is therefore the means by which the greater part of our industrial alcohol is manufactured. Its value in whisky distilling is more doubtful. For whisky derives its character—or, rather, whiskies derive their characters—from the presence in the finished liquid of tiny ‘impurities’ which the hard efficiency of the patent-still eliminates.
The problem of whether or not spirits made in a patent-still were entitled to the name of whisky is one which at one time exercised the minds of those who were genuinely interested in the honour of the liquid.12 It is difficult not to regret that the battle went on that occasion to the strong in numbers and wealth, and that the final decision was in the hands of those who were ignorant of what whisky really is.
It is unfortunately true that the whole modern history of whisky is a record of the opening of door after door to commercial vandalism, of the stretching of definitions until they cease almost to have any meaning at all.13 The influence of the patent still is not the only one to be deplored. Whisky has shown, or has been compelled to show, such a hospitality to strangers that its house has now an excessively crowded and variegated appearance. As early as 1678 the principal materials used in making Scotch whisky had been fixed, though herbs and spices were probably added as in Ireland to produce the various local brands of aqua vitae, cordial, etc. Sir Robert Moray writes,14 ‘Malt is there (in Scotland) made of no other grain but barley whereof there are two kinds, one which hath four rows of grain in the ear, the other, two rows. The first is more commonly used; but the other makes the best malt.’ In the first half of the eighteenth century the ‘Society of Improvers in Agriculture’15 took up the question of whisky distilling; one James Dunbar16 made suggestions about the manufacturing process and a Dutchman, Wyngaarden, drew up directions for the use of Scottish distillers. Unscrupulous manufacturing methods were not a crime of the Highlanders, who protested that the spirit made in the Lowlands, and in Ireland, from unmalted grain was ‘Scotch’d spirit’, not whisky. Until quite late in the century Irish usquebaugh was a cordial made by adding cinnamon, liquorice, and other spices to grain or malt spirit. It seems possible that in Scotland aqua vitae referred to a pure malt spirit, and usquebaugh to a spiced cordial; at any rate a distinction of some sort was preserved, for in 1732 the Duke of Atholl wrote to Lord George Murray, the famous general of the ’45, complaining that ‘I have not one drop of either usquba or acquvitae in the house.’ In the early part of the nineteenth century the words ‘Scotch whisky’ had a very definite and precise meaning.17 They denoted a whisky made in Scotland from malted home-grown barley (dried over a peat fire in the case of Highland whisky), and distilled in a pot-still. At the same time Irish whisky had a similarly close and exact definition. It meant whisky made in Ireland by treble-distilling, in potstills heated by furnaces, of a wort obtained from a mash of malted barley, barley and oats, all the grain being home-grown.
One of a set of six contemporary postcards satirising the work of the experts of the Royal Commission on Whiskey. Thomson’s mother was a staunch temperance advocate but, more than one hundred years on, the image bears a striking resemblance to a well-known whisky writer!
As the century progressed, however, it became obvious that these definitions could not be adhered to. By the ’70s it could no longer be concealed that much of the barley used in making Scotch
whisky was grown abroad. This was a grave breach with tradition, for as early as 1703 the bailies of Strath Spey decreed that aqua vitae was to be brewed only from malt grown in the locality.
The introduction of patent-still distilling had an even more disturbing effect in the art of whisky-making. For if a patent-still spirit was a whisky, then where was the line to be drawn? Only by wresting the name ‘whisky’ violently from its earlier, well-established meaning could it be applied to the neutral, ‘silent’, flavourless product of the patent-still. Adam Young in his Distillery Instructions18 refuses the name whisky to patent-still spirits; as late as 1890 it was widely and authoritatively denied.
But the Royal Commission on Whiskey of 1908–1909 opened the dykes to the invading floods of patent-still spirit by defining whisky as ‘a spirit obtained by distillation from a mash of cereal grain, saccarified by the diastase of malt.’ This was comprehensive enough, and sweeping enough. It made no distinction between Scotch and Irish whiskies; it did not stipulate that the grain or malt should be home grown; it did not specify that pot-stills alone were to be used; it did not mention Scotch whisky’s true character as a distillate of a wort made from malt. As one commentator19 has sardonically observed, it was at least something that beetroot, potatoes, and sawdust were eliminated. They may have been by the sagacious Commission but at least one of them, potatoes, is mentioned in an exhibit at the Science Museum, South Kensington, as a source from which whisky can be obtained!
The reckless extension of the term ‘whisky’ has had the gravest consequences for the prestige of the industry. It has tended to deprive whisky of the special character it had built up during centuries of careful and pious labour and research. The tasteless distillate of grain, made at one process in a patent-still, is equally entitled to call itself whisky as the exquisite, pot-still, malt whisky, dried above a peat fire. It is only right to say that the definition was made in defiance of the best opinion of the distilling industry. The Duke of Richmond and Gordon, landlord of the most famous of all whisky districts, gave expression to this opinion in a speech in 1909: ‘Quite recently, a public inquiry has taken upon itself to decide, What is Whisky? And I regret to say that apparently anything made in Scotland, whatever its combination, is to be called Scotch whisky. But for my part, I should prefer, and I think most of those whom I am addressing now would prefer, to trust their own palates rather than to the dogma of chemists.’
At the same time, it is to be deplored that the opposition of serious-minded, cultivated whisky drinkers to the pretensions of the Whisky Commission was not stronger. It was nothing short of a sin against the light to lump malt whisky with neutral industrial spirit as if it too were something to burn in lamps, to drive engines, or to clean clothes. The evil having been done, however, it is necessary to instruct the whisky public, especially young and inexperienced drinkers, in the true facts of the case so that, so far as possible, ‘whisky by grace of the Royal Commission’ may be left to those who ask for nothing more from their beverage than a ‘kick’. This, at least, it will guarantee for them. But the children of light will continue to demand of their Scotch whisky that it should be distilled in Scotland by means of pot-stills, from mashing materials consisting of malted barley and nothing else, dried in kilns by peat or other fuel according to the locality; and of their Irish whiskey that it should be pot-still, from malted barley, either alone or with unmalted barley, oats, rye, or other indigenous cereal. By accommodating themselves thus far to modern conditions, they will assure themselves of a whisky which it will be possible to drink without a grimace (with a heroic determination to overlook the means for the sake of the end), and even—granted discrimination—with delight.
The distilling of whisky is only one half of the manufacturing process. We have still to account for the fact that though there are less than 130 Scotch and Irish distilleries, there are over 4,000 brands of whisky on the market. Whence comes this monstrous multiplication? The answer is to be found in the process known as blending.
The practice of blending whiskies sprang up in Scotland about 1860 as a natural development of a process which was much older, ‘vatting’. By ‘vatting’ is meant the mixing of single whiskies from the same distillery but belonging to various distillations made at different periods of the year. Its purpose is to obtain a whisky of uniform character. For whisky distilled in October differs from a winter whisky and both of them differ from a spring whisky.20 Owing to changes in temperature, in the character of the barley, and in the chemical composition of the water employed, whisky, that master of delicate adjustments, differs from one week to another.
About 1853, spirits from the same distillery but of different ages were already being blended; by 1865 pot-still and patent-still (i.e. grain) whiskies were blended for the home market. The pioneers in the revolution—for it was nothing less—were Messrs. Andrew Usher & Co. of Edinburgh whose old-vatted Glenlivet achieved a considerable reputation about that time. The practice spread and soon Glasgow, Leith, Dundee, and Aberdeen were the chief centres of a considerable blending industry. From the purely commercial point of view, blending was a tremendous benefit for the distillers. The old single malt whiskies of the Highlands were, on the whole, too powerful and heavy for sedentary town-dwellers. Blending made it possible to make a whisky which would suit different climates and different classes of patrons. For by adding the lighter Lowland malts and the neutral or almost neutral grain whiskies, in greater or less degree, a whisky could be evolved of a ‘weight’ and a strength of flavour and bouquet to suit the taste or the commercial requirements of the blender. The great export trade in whisky is almost entirely due to the adaptability and elasticity which blending lent to the industry. Even today the aesthetics of whisky have a very definite geographical aspect. London likes a milder, less pronounced whisky than Lancashire. Lancashire in its turn affects a whisky which is lighter and less pungent in taste than that which solaces the east winds of Edinburgh. But Edinburgh is surpassed by Glasgow, where they revel in the ‘denser’ and fuller-bodied joys of the Campbeltown malts. In the Highlands, malt whiskies are still drunk, uncontaminated by the diluting, chilling alliance with grain. In the country districts where the distilleries are to be found, there are devotees of the old ‘single’, ‘self’, or unblended whiskies. As for the export markets, Australia and India favour the lighter, drier charms of the blends goût anglais, in which the Highland malts have been subdued by grain and Lowland malt. But Canada, as one might have expected, tends to follow Scotland. On the continent, the Scandinavian countries display a preference for the class of whiskies which find favour in Edinburgh and its neighbourhood; but Holland, Belgium and France, where it has become smart of recent years to ask for ‘le scotch’, take their opinions on this important matter from the English.
A calling card for Andrew Usher’s Glenlivet whiskies, acknowledged as one of the pioneers in the process of blending
The technique of blending can be briefly described. The first style may be termed the ‘rough and ready’. The proportions of the different whiskies to be used are determined beforehand, in most cases upon a tried formula; the whiskies are poured into a vat where they are mixed up thoroughly and allowed to stand for a day and a night in order that the ‘marriage’ may be consummated. The blend is drawn off into casks and bottled shortly after. The result is a cheap whisky, imperfectly blended, raw and unsatisfactory in flavour. The better practice is first to prepare blends of carefully selected malt whiskies and allow these to stand in casks for about two years. When this has been done, it is a comparatively simple matter to make a blend that will suit an individual market. The blended malts are run into the vat and mixed with more or less Lowland malt and more or less grain whisky. The resulting blend is then drawn off and left in the cask to marry for a minimum period of six months. The process of mixing in the vats, which used to be done by revolving paddles, is more usually performed in large-scale blending by the passing of compressed air through the mixed liquors from a
large number of small jets in the bottom of the vat. In this manner, it is said by some, a surer and more intimate mixture is obtained and the horrid possibility of a subsequent failure of marriage banished. But no technical device affects the supreme clause in the matrimonial legislation of whisky, that time is of the essence of the contract. Whiskies are capricious, sensitive creatures; they are not to be flung at one another like goats. Rather are they to be compared to fillies which are highly likely to plant iron heels in the belly of the too forward stallion. They must grow accustomed to one another and, unless they have been carefully chosen, no amount of time will persuade them to live together in amity.
After the experimental stage of blending had passed, the blender evolved fairly definite rules of his craft.21 He no longer works in the dark; he knows exactly what he is going to create. He begins by grading whiskies in territorial groups. Thus—to anticipate somewhat the contents of a later chapter—the whiskies of the Glenlivet district and its surrounding country (for only one whisky is legally entitled to describe itself as ‘Glenlivet’, nomen praeclarissimum) are ranked together; the North Country whiskies (for the most part Aberdonian) form another class, and so on. Within certain limits the blender is aware that he can substitute one North Country whisky for another in his blend, one Speyside for another, one Islay for another. He also knows that, although there are excellent malt whiskies which would never, were they to be kept to the Judgment Day, do anything but bicker in the cask, there are unions predestined to be blessed. Thus the Banffshire whiskies can be counted upon to make a happy and enduring marriage with the Islays.