Have you booked for the Campbeltown Malts Festival yet? From the 21st to the 24th of May Campbeltown celebrates all things whisky (and gin) with a full programme of distillery open days, whisky dinners, tastings, cinema screenings and much, much more. I'm delighted to be joining the fun this year with a couple of walking tours to give you the chance to enjoy a bit of fresh air and exercise along with your drams!

If you'd like to join either of my walking tours just send me a wee email for booking/payment info. If you like the sound of the tours but can't make the times or dates shown then do drop me an email and I'll see what I can do!

For details of all the Distillery Open Days and what events they have planned, you should check their websites.  The fun kicks off with Beinn an Tuirc (Kintyre Gin) Open Day on Tues 21st (yes, I know it's not a malt, but we're an inclusive bunch down here), followed by Glen Scotia on Wed 22nd, Springbank on Thurs 23rd and Kilkerran and Cadenheads on Fri 24th. If you haven't been before, you really should come - it's a great week! 

For transport and accommodation options, have a look at Explore Campbeltown to help you plan your visit here. Hope to see you soon!

Following on from yesterday’s look at the history of whisky distilling in Australia, today I’m going to focus very much on the present (and future) and have a chat with three people from different spheres of the whisky industry; Niko Devlin, President of the Australian Whisky Appreciation Society (and the man responsible for this blog piece!), Frank McHardy, Chief Whiskey Advisor at the Whipper Snapper Distillery in Perth, Western Australia and Mark Coburn, who is currently in the process of building the Coburns Distillery in New South Wales. 

First though, let’s take a wee look at what is happening with whisky today. Fortunately things look a lot rosier than where we left it yesterday! The birth (rebirth?) of the modern Australian whisky industry is pretty much credited to one man - Bill Lark. In 1992 Lark fired up his small still at the Lark Distillery in Hobart, Tasmania, making him the first person to hold a distilling license on the island for 153 years. No mean feat, since in order to do so, he first successfully lobbied the Minister of Agriculture to change the 1901 Licensing Act requirement that stills had to be a minimum of 2700 litres. This change in law presumably paved the way for the plethora of small craft distilleries currently springing up all over Australia. 

While the number of distilleries has increased dramatically since Lark was established, the volumes produced nationwide remain very small. It would certainly seem that the current crop of Aussie distillers are focussing very much on quality over quantity. According to Deloitte, Australia currently produces around 360,000 litres per annum - that’s less than is currently produced in Campbeltown’s 3 distilleries (Springbank, Glengyle and Glen Scotia) and Campbeltown ain’t exactly a powerhouse in terms of Scotch whisky production volumes!

Why did you decide to start a distillery and why now? 

The seed was planted in me 14 years ago when I visited a small distillery in Queensland. The distiller had been an early business partner of Bill Lark, the grandfather of the Australian distilling industry. The distiller had moved from Hobart to the hinterland behind Queensland’s Gold Coast and was making flavoured liquors. I was fascinated by the process. Over the last ten years I have been working towards making the leap to setting up my own distillery. Along the way I came up with the idea that I wanted to be drinking my own 20yo single malt by the time I was 70. This year I turned 49, so it was now or never. 

It has taken me a while to work out where my love of distilling comes from. Note that it’s the distilling and not the whisky that came first. To put it into context let me explain; I believe that one of the sincerest ways to show love to another person is by cooking for them, I refer to it as 'putting love on the plate'. Whether it is a 36 hour slow cooked leg of pork or a breakfast omelette, I love cooking for family and friends. I am always looking for new techniques that will create a more enjoyable eating experience, regardless of the extra time or effort the process will take. Distilling comes into context when you learn that my other great passion is steam engines. I am a avid model steam locomotive enthusiast who loves to build and run working model steam engines. The thought occurred to me a few years ago that whisky distillation is the intersection of food and steam. 

Why did your choose the Southern Highlands of NSW as the location? 

First off, I live here! The area has rolling countryside with a proper four seasons which you don’t get in most of Australia. 
The distillery site itself covers 15 acres (6.2ha), of which 3 acres (1.5ha) is peat bog. It’s the only Australian distillery with their own onsite peat for smoking the barley. There are two types of amazing water onsite: Peat filtered lake water and four pure water springs. It’s a warm north facing site for those cold winter days, 725 meters above sea level with average summer temperatures of 14-24C, average winter temperatures 5-13C (100mm of snow last winter) and average rainfall of 700mm.

As a visitors centre is an important part of the business plan, we needed to be easily accessible to nearby towns and major cities. The site we have selected is 12 minutes from Bowral, Mittagong & Moss Vale (25,000 population), 1h 45m drive from Sydney, New South Wales, 1h 45m drive from Canberra, Australian Capital.

Where are you in the process?

The distillery site is being purchased now. Currently we are working on a round of capital raising through barrel sales. We filled an early round of barrel sales and now we have a limited number of barrels in our second offering via our 'Barrel Investment program’ 

​Very soon we will be producing product at another site while we wait for planning approvals for our new distillery to be granted. We will have licensing and planning approvals for on-site production within 12 months. The plan is that we can be releasing our first small cask whiskies by 2020-21. 

Do you have a particular style of whisky in mind and how will you achieve that?

We are planning to start by putting down five expressions that will represent the four seasons of the New South Wales Southern Highlands. 

Coburns Distillery will distill a triple distilled spirit. Our spirit will be produced in three separate 5000ltr stills, each still built to capture different characteristics. The three still concept is designed to give our distillers and blenders a broad range of flavour profiles in the new make spirit to then create desired style of each expression. To clarify, by having the option of a larger spirit still we hope to have the ability to cut the hearts cleanly into early, mid and late hearts thereby having the ability to be able to make distinct expressions from the new make. 

Our goal is to create a single malt that captures the essence of our region. In the process, I hope to create a way of life to hand over to my two daughters in the future. Not to mention the dream of sitting on my balcony over looking the distillery drinking my own 20 year old malt. 

Where do you see yourself and your whiskies in 10-20 years time?

We hope to have a substantial visitor centre trade to promote our region and add to that some international sales (and recognition) would be the dream come true. 

As I am now discovering, many new distilleries have started up in Australia in recent years - do you see this as an advantage or a disadvantage for you? 

We hope that we can inspire and help many more distilleries to open in this area. Joadja Distillery is the only other whisky distillery in the area, we hope to work closely with the owners Elisa & Valero Jimenez to build the region’s whisky profile. The goal is to be able to have the Southern Highlands of New South Wales defined as it’s own whisky region within Australia.

How will your whisky stand out from the crowd?

By being exceptional in every aspect of what we do. From our cellar door hospitality, to our product branding & presentation, and most importantly by making an exceptionally well-crafted spirit we hope to let what we do speak for itself. 

A few months ago I got a facebook message from a guy called Niko Devlin, who is the President of the Australian Whisky Appreciation Society, which went something like, “Hey, I like your distillery maps of Scotland. You ever thought of doing one of Australia?”. Now, I’ll be honest, I hadn’t even thought there were enough distilleries in Australia to fill out a whisky map! I knew there were a few in Tasmania, but turns out that was a bit of understatement. There are currently 11 whisky distilleries in Tasmania and 24 in mainland Australia. Who knew? Not me. So, with a LOT of help from Niko and a fair bit of jiggery pokery with distillery locations (there being a total dearth of distilleries in that top middley bit of the very big country that is Australia) I did up a distillery map of Australia.  

When you think about it, it’s not really surprising that Australia has a thriving whisky scene. In fact, I think Dave Broom summed it up pretty well in his ‘World Atlas of Whisky’, “The most surprising thing about the Australian whisky boom is that it’s taken so long to happen. This, after all, is a country that was widely settled by Scots, is rich in malting barley and culturally is known to like a drink”.  ​

You could say that the history of spirits and distilling in Australia dates back to the arrival, if not of the First Fleet in 1788, then certainly of the first free settlers in the 1790s. Rum and brandy appear to have been the spirits of choice; Sugar plantations were established in Queensland in the mid 1800s and rum production followed shortly afterwards. Maybe the taste for rum was brought over by the British Navy with the First Fleet? It would appear to be a lasting taste too; in the 1995 book ‘Classic Spirits of the World’, rum is quoted as being, “Australia’s second drink to beer, with the leading brand, Bundaberg, outselling Johnnie Walker by two to one”. (Incidentally in the same book, Australian whisky didn’t even get a mention!). Brandy making grew from a need for a grape based spirit to produce fortified wines (much more popular at the time than table wines). The knowledge of wine making as well as presumably brandy distillation had been brought over by early European immigrants. The number of brandy distilleries grew throughout the 19th century and in 1901 the first laws were drawn up to regulate the burgeoning industry. 

Despite the large numbers of Scottish and Irish immigrants though, and the wide availability of grains and beer, whisky distilling (of the legal type at least) didn’t really seem to gain a major foothold. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that whisky distilleries didn’t exist. They did. In fact, the first legal whisky distillery in Australia was established way back in 1822, in Tasmania. That’s 2 years before the Glenlivet, the “distillery that started it all” in Scotland.  However, unlike in Scotland, legal distilling in Tasmania was to be a very short lived affair. In 1839 the Distillation Prohibition Act banned colonial distillation altogether and it was to be another 153 years before anyone was granted a distilling licence on the island.

By 1954, Corio was apparently the largest distillery in the Southern Hemisphere, having produced, in its first 25 years of existence, some 12 million gallons (about 48 million LPA) of whisky and 5 million litres of gin. This accounted for two thirds of the total Australian whisky trade and half the gin market! 

Quantity does not always equate to quality though, and it would appear that, certainly latterly, Corio’s reputation was questionable at best. One description I saw compared it to motor oil, another described it as “rot-gut” and apparently instructions from HQ (that would be DCL) were to produce something “no better than the worst scotch whisky”. Not exactly a ringing endorsement. The distillery continued in production right up to the 1980s though, when it was closed following massive financial losses.  It’s reputation not withstanding, the Corio distillery, through its comparative longevity if nothing else, clearly had an important role in the history of the Australian whisky industry. The article I read described the Corio brand as “leaving behind a twofold legacy; firstly, it was proof positive that whisky could be made in Australia, and on a large scale, and; secondly, that if it was ever to be done again the focus would have to be on quality rather than quantity. Thankfully that’s exactly what those in the present day industry have realised.”

So there you have it. I’m still none the wiser as to why the Australian whisky boom took so long to happen but I am slightly better informed as to the history behind it. Tomorrow I’ll take a look at the rebirth of the Australian whisky industry in the 1990s and what’s happening now. 

My poor blog has been somewhat abandoned over the summer months (what little summer we had anyway) so this week’s news of the release of Wolfburn Aurora gave me the impetus I needed to get back to the keyboard and write my long overdue Wolfburn distillery focus.

I’m really looking forward to hearing what these guys have been up to as I used to work with Shane (Shane Fraser, Production Manager) when we were both at Glenfarclas. I know, I know, another Glenfarclas connection but you know that saying about there being only 6 degrees of separation between anyone on the planet? Well, I think when you’re talking about the Scotch Whisky industry you can probably reduce that to about 2 degrees! Let’s see what Shane has to say for himself anyway;

Maturation is all on site in our purpose-built warehouses.  We hand-select all our casks, which mostly come from Spain or America.  And we also bottle on site – Wolfburn is one of only a tiny handful of distilleries where everything happens in one place. 

Q. Who do you see as your target market? 
Anyone who enjoys fine quality single malt scotch, globally.  We have distribution in 21 countries globally. 

Q. When do you plan to release your first whisky? Will you be producing any other products in the meantime? 
We launched in Feb 2016, and have been selling ever since.  We’ll never produce anything other than whisky – it’s our expertise and it’s what defines us as a brand and as a business. 

​Q. What’s your long term goal? Where do you see yourself and your distillery in 20 years time? 
To be honest I am enjoying everything so much on a day-to-day or month-to-month basis that I don’t give much thought to long term plans at the moment!  If Wolfburn continues to grow, and we continue to produce such lovely whisky, I shall be very happy. 

All in all an excellent dram, although you might not get that impression from some of his tasting notes! He is a bit odd and insists that stale custard creams, sileage, pebbles and pumice stones are all meant in a good way!

Incidentally Mark visited Wolfburn in 2013, shortly after they started production, as part of his stag do celebrations. He even managed to take 2 photos while he was there (pretty impressive for a stag do I feel) which I have included in this article.

This wee series I've been doing on new distilleries has made me realise that my map design could really do with being updated! So while Mark has been away 'working' at the Spirit of Speyside Festival, I have done just that. 

For my next distillery focus, I’m going to Speyside, my home for many years, and the Ballindalloch Distillery. These guys were practically my neighbours when I worked at Glenfarclas so I was really keen to find out a bit more about what they were up to. I moved away from Speyside just after they opened, so although I often drove past the distillery while it was being built, I’m ashamed to admit that I haven’t yet had the opportunity to visit. (Something I hope to remedy very soon!) 

While the Ballindalloch Distillery is a new venture, distilling on the Ballindalloch Estate  certainly isn’t; In fact, the Ballindalloch Estate used to feature fairly prominently in my descriptions of the early history of Glenfarclas. You see, the Glenfarclas Distillery was founded by tenant farmer Robert Hay in 1836 on Rechlerich Farm (part of the Ballindalloch Estate). When Robert Hay died in 1865, local farmer John Grant took over the tenancy and purchased the distillery at the same time (for the bargain price of £511.19d). Since his interests lay in farming, rather than distilling, he initially put in a manager, John Smith, to run the distillery for him, while he concentrated on farming. A few years later, in 1869, John Smith left Glenfarclas to establish the Cragganmore Distillery, in conjunction with the 4th Baronet of Ballindalloch, Sir George Macpherson-Grant. 

At that point, John Grant’s son, George, took over the running of the Glenfarclas distillery and farm and it has remained in the family ever since. They only ceased being tenants of the Ballindalloch Estate in 1930 though when George Grant (John’s grandson) bought the freehold. As far as I am aware, Cragganmore is still on Estate grounds, and there may well be other distilleries which were, or are, on the Estate but I’m not entirely sure of the full geographical reach. It’s certainly a fairly big area, covering some 7000 hectares today (around 27 square miles) and presumably much more than that in the past.

Anyway, enough about the history, let’s find out what’s going on in the present! Brian Robinson, the Distillery Host, very kindly answered my questions; ​

Q. If you were to compare your distillery to any other existing or closed one, which would you most aspire to be like and why?
I’m not sure that I would make any direct comparisons to specific distilleries. We are fairly typical of a Speyside style but with a more complex spirit character. My aspirations would be allied to any distillery that has produced a wonderful whisky and built a following of people who appreciate and understand the hard work that goes into making something special!

Q. Are you open to visitors? Can we buy your product, either in bottles or cask? If not now, then when?
We do indeed welcome visitors, but we do not have a Visitor Centre as such. Tours are offered by appointment and I will then tailor the visit to the guests who book. I can offer tours that start at £35 per person and last around 2½ hours through to a day spent working with Colin, Phillip and Mike. Called The Art of Whisky Making, it allows up to 2 guests to get hands on for the day getting involved with everything that we do here.

As far as buying any product is concerned, as I mentioned earlier, there is a bit of a wait there I am afraid. I do have a very small Private Cask program with no more than 25 casks available each year. If anyone is interested, it is best to email me directly and I will discuss the program with them.

You can contact me at [email protected] and follow us on Facebook for all the latest updates.

For my next ‘newbie’ focus, we are heading to Scotland’s industrial heartland - Glasgow and the Glasgow Distillery Company Limited (not to be confused with the Glasgow Distillery project by Morrisons Glasgow Distillers Ltd, which as far as I am aware is still in the early planning stages).

​While Glasgow sometimes gets a bit of an unfair reputation from those that don’t know it, personally I love the place - I lived there for many years as a student so have a fairly in depth knowledge of the consumption of alcohol there, if not the making of it! 

As Scotland’s largest city, and industrial and trading hub, Glasgow has a long history of blending and bottling whisky and many of the big names (Chivas, Diageo, Whyte & Mackay, Dewars, Edrington) still have some kind of presence there. According to Brian Townsend, in his book Scotch Missed, historically Glasgow “was a city of many distilleries with colourful names” but the last malt distilleries closed down in the early 1900s (apart from the short-lived Kinclaith distillery, within Strathclyde Grain Distillery, which ran from 1958 to around 1975). 

The CEO of Glasgow Distillery Company Ltd, Liam Hughes, very kindly took the time to answer my questions (yep, same ones as last time - that was the plan remember?) before heading off on holiday. Here’s what he had to say;

Q. Where is your distillery located, and why in that specific location?
Glasgow Distillery is the only Single Malt Distillery in a city in Scotland and was chosen because we wanted to build a distillery on the basis of its city location and logistical practicality after visiting the Brooklyn Distillery who had done something similar. ​

Q. Why did you decide to start producing whisky? And why now?
​We were always going to make Whisky – Glasgow hasn’t had a Single Malt Distillery since 1902 so it seemed a gap that needed filling.

My quest to become better informed about all the new Scottish distilleries has begun! My plan is simple; contact all the distilleries and ask them all the same questions so I (and therefore you) can firstly, learn more about their experiences, philosophies and future plans, but also (hopefully!) explore the differences between them. ​

First up is Ardnamurchan Distillery, owned by the independent bottler Adelphi Distillery Ltd. Now  independent bottlers acquiring distilleries is nothing new; think Signatory and Edradour, G&M and Benromach and Ian MacLeod and Glengoyne/Tamdu to name a few. As far as I know though, Adelphi are the first independent bottler to build their own distillery from scratch (Although Wemyss followed suit with the Kingsbarns Distillery a few months later). 

I seem to have been writing about J & A Mitchell quite a lot recently, but since last weekend marked the 12th Anniversary of the opening (re-opening?) of Mitchell’s Glengyle distillery, I figured that warranted another post. At least it is about Kilkerran this time rather than Springbank!

At the time, it was quite a novelty - it was one of the forerunners in the wave (now practically a tsunami) of new Scottish Distilleries, and the first distillery to open in Campbeltown in well over 100 years. The original Glengyle distillery had been founded in 1872 by William Mitchell, who ran it until 1919, when it was sold. It closed its doors a few years later in 1925. Although all the distilling equipment was removed, and the stock sold off, the distillery buildings themselves remained pretty much intact over the intervening years, being used first as a rifle range, then as an agricultural depot.  

The story goes that Mr Hedley G Wright, current chairman of J & A Mitchell Co Ltd, during one of his visits to Springbank, had noticed that the buildings were for sale and commented, “Hmm, my great-great uncle used to own Glengyle. I think I should buy it.”  I may be paraphrasing slightly but you get the idea! Buy it he did (in November 2000), and the ambitious plan to create a brand new distillery within the walls of the old one began.

The first time I saw the soon to be new Glengyle distillery, in 2002, it was an empty shell. A very large empty shell!  Over the next couple of years though, I, along with all the other staff at Springbank, gradually watched the new distillery come to life under the direction of Mr Wright and Frank McHardy, who was Springbank Distillery Manager at the time. ​

The stills and mill were sourced second hand - the stills from Ben Wyvis distillery and the mill from Craigellachie - although the shape of the stills was altered somewhat to give the distillery character they wanted. The rest of the equipment was new though - the very large stainless steel mash tun was brought down by road (I’d have hated to be stuck behind that lorry on the way down to the town!) and fitted by Forsyths of Speyside. I vividly remember watching the washbacks be built on site - now that was impressive! If you’ve ever been to a cooperage and watched them building casks, it was like that but on a much, much larger scale. The noise of 5 or 6 guys hammering the huge hoops into place around the newly installed washbacks was something else! I also remember the first time the new washbacks were filled - and the water just poured out the bottom!  They do that apparently, until the giant staves absorb enough water to expand into place and make them watertight. That’ll be why they were filled with water first then, won’t it? (That’s also why wooden washbacks are kept full of water when not in use, so that they don’t dry out and start leaking).