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Happy 12th Birthday Kilkerran!

1/4/2016

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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!
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Also, I have first hand experience of the birth of Kilkerran so to speak since I pretty much watched the Glengyle distillery being built. You see, I’d started working at Springbank just after all the pigeons had been turfed out of their rather large home and the buildings had been restored and made wind and water (and pigeon) tight. (I remember rightly the stills, and possibly the condensers, were in a lean to out the back, waiting for all the other production equipment to be put in before they could be installed)
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).
The first spirit flowed from the still in March 2004 with very little fuss or fanfare, although we did have a great party to celebrate Kilkerran’s official coming of age 3 years later. The party was held in an empty warehouse at the distillery and all the guests got given a goodie bag with a miniature of new make and a miniature of the new 3yo whisky - I’ve still got mine somewhere! 
It’s strange to think that the first 12 year old Kilkerran Single Malt will be released later this year cause none of this seems that long ago! (I know, it’s a sign of age, before anyone else points it out). It’s really nice being back in Campbeltown and able to participate in the 12th Birthday celebrations as well; I got my 12th birthday tour, dram and bit of birthday cake last weekend and I’m very much looking forward to trying the 12 year old when it comes out.
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Springbank - a blast from the past?

23/3/2016

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Plan of Springbank and Longrow distilleries in 1898 (bodged together from British Library online gallery).
In the course of some research for the Liquid History tour that I’m doing during the Campbeltown Malts Festival in May I came across some fascinating Fire Insurance maps of Campbeltown from 1898. There are 10 maps covering pretty much the whole town (or at least all the parts which could’ve been considered a fire risk) and they are incredibly detailed. Not only do they show the location of all the distilleries (22 at that time) but they also show where the stills, kilns, warehouses etc were situated. Whisky geek heaven!*
What I found really interesting though was looking at the plan of Springbank. I mean, I used to work there, and I now live pretty much next door, so I know it’s a very traditional distillery but seeing the old maps really brought home just how little has changed since 1898. Okay, one of the maltings and kiln has disappeared to make way for the malt storage bins, two of the worm tubs have been changed for condensers and there have been a couple of new warehouses built and a couple repurposed but that’s about it as far as changes go. One set of malt floors, the mill, mash house, tun room and stills are all still in the same place. Even the office is still in the same place!
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The 1898 map overlaid with my annotations of present day Springbank
It’s all the more remarkable then to think that at one point in time, Springbank was considered to be at the forefront of innovation and modernisation! In an article that Hedley G Wright, the current Chairman of Springbank, wrote for The Wine and Spirit Trade Record in 1963, he stated, “Springbank Distillery today has changed in several features from olden times. The company has been one of the pioneers of mechanisation within the distilling industry and the movement of barley and malt is now performed entirely by belts screws and elevators…The actual maltings have been rationalised so that there is only one set of floors and one kiln where formerly there had been two independent maltings…The green malt is dried on a pressure kiln of modern design and this item of equipment has been found to give a superior quality of malt and also effect considerable economy of time and fuel"
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The current maltings are in the background. The building in the foreground is the malt store today but used to be the second maltings.
It’s reassuring to note though that even in the 1960s, when Springbank was a ‘pioneer of mechanisation’, the quality of the spirit always came first. In the same article, Mr Wright describes several modern methods/practices that were rejected because of the adverse effect on the spirit; ​

Firstly for malting, “Modern techniques of box or drum maltings were rejected in favour of the traditional system as they did not effect an adequate economy to compensate for the poorer quality of malt produced by these methods”

Then fermentation, “The actual washbacks are made of Scottish ‘boat-skin’ larch wood, for it is the belief of the proprietors that a steel wash back, although less expensive to install and maintain, gives a distinct taint to the final whisky, in an analogous manner to the distinctive tone given to a violin by the use of steel strings.”
Then distillation, “The wash is pumped into a large copper still which is heated by a coal fire underneath and also, simultaneously, by an internal steam coil through which superheated steam is passed. This method of heating a wash still is the  traditional Campbeltown technique and has been used at Springbank for as long as records indicate; it is thought that no distilleries outside Campbeltown use this method.”
Mr Wright’s opinions have clearly not changed since the 60s as Springbank still uses traditional floor maltings, boat skin larch wash backs and a wash still heated simultaneously by direct fire (although oil rather than coal now) and internal steam coils. 

​I wonder how many other distilleries in Scotland have changed so little since the 1960s, or indeed the 1890s? 

*If anyone wants to check out the maps for themselves you can find them on the British Library online gallery. Big thanks to Joe Trotter from the Lost Distillery Company for giving me the link in the first place!


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Springbank office in background and joiner's store on right (used to be a duty free warehouse)
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Helensburgh Charity Whisky Tasting

19/3/2016

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Last night my husband, Mark, and I hosted our first ever joint tasting. It wasn’t our idea. Rather a very good friend of mine had asked us both to host a charity whisky tasting to raise money for Macmillan Cancer Support in Helensburgh and we couldn’t really refuse because a) I’ve known her forever and she’s one of my best friends and b) she knows first hand how vital a service Macmillan provides. 

Now, I’m not going to lie - we were both a little nervous about doing a joint tasting. We’ve both done hundreds of tastings over our careers but never together and never to raise money for a cause that was so close to us; Would enough people turn up? Would we be able to pull off a joint tasting without it ending in divorce? Would we make enough money?
Happily, all our fears were unfounded. We had a good turnout of around 60 people - some whisky enthusiasts, some novices and some that didn’t even like whisky but had come along because Rhona asked them to and it was for a good cause - We even managed to convert one of our non-whisky drinking friends!  (Yes, we do have some!) The joint tasting thing seemed to go okay too, at least after the first dram or two, and, between ticket sales and the raffle, we raised a fantastic £1640 for Macmillan. All in all, a pretty successful evening.

​We had a pretty good tasting line up too thanks to Mark’s current employer, Cadenheads, and my previous employers, Springbank and Glenfarclas, who very generously donated all of the whisky for the event.
The evening started off with Campbeltown Loch 21yo, followed by an 11yo Cadenhead’s Balmenach, limited edition Glenfarclas £511.19s.0d, Springbank 10yo, then a Cadenhead’s 1988 Sherry Cask Highland Park and then finished off with a 1984 34yo Caol Ila (also Cadenhead’s). There was no clear favourite with the crowd fairly evenly split on which they preferred. I’d be hard pushed to pick a favourite myself but think it was probably either the HP or the Caol Ila. I’ll certainly be asking Mark to get bottles of both for the house!​
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Huge thanks to everyone that provided whisky, raffle prizes and came along to support the event. Who knows, we may even do more joint tastings in the future!
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Springbank 16yo Local Barley - it's Flipping Good!

26/2/2016

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Today is an exciting day - I have finally managed to get my hands on some of the new Springbank Local Barley! Now, I must admit, my expectations are fairly (unreasonably?) high for this one as one of my favourite drams of all time is the 1966 Local Barley, which I first tried way back in 2003 at the Vienna Whisky Fair when the lovely chaps from the Austrian Whisky Society very kindly gave me a dram from their bottle in the bar after the show. I remember being absolutely blown away, not just by the whisky, but by the fact that a group of people I had never met before that weekend would share such an old, rare whisky with me, just because they thought I would like it and be interested to try it. ​
I have been fortunate enough to taste the 1966 a few times since then, but it is that first taste, when I was brand new to the whisky industry and not long after I started working at Springbank that really sticks in my mind.

This 16yo Local Barley certainly has a lot to live up to! Not only that, but the barley was grown on my parents’ friends’ farm - I used to go to play at Low Machrimore when I was a kid. (Admittedly, that was a bit more than 16 years ago.)  They’ve retired now and sold the farm but it is quite something to think that I know the guy that grew that barley that made the whisky that I’m about to drink! 

Now, I must admit, on first impressions, I’m not blown away. Probably for the reasons I have just described. So, let’s try it again. Wow. What a mouthfeel - it’s fantastically thick and chewy. Really, really good. This is definitely one that improves with a bit of time in the glass (for me anyway). The finish is quite surprising as it doesn’t have any of the smokiness that I would normally associate with Springbank but rather a kind of pebbly mineral note. 
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Love the fact that the label is a throwback to the iconic 1965 Local Barley.
Released this month, this is retailing at around £95 a bottle, although I have seen some bottles sell at auction (yes, already!) for more than double that. Which brings me on to a rant that I have now and again when the subject of escalating whisky prices comes up. As consumers, we often complain that whisky is too expensive, that prices just keep rising. Which is true, but look at it from the producers point of view. How annoying must it be to see someone (or many someones in this case) buy your bottles, not to drink and enjoy, but to immediately flip at auction, making themselves more money per bottle than both the producer and retailer combined? If the market is willing to pay that higher price, then it is totally understandable that the producer would want to increase their share of the profits to allow them to reinvest in the business. 
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Using this Springbank Local Barley as an example, if Springbank were to charge an extra £20 a bottle (equating to an increase of about £50 on the retail price I would think) they would net themselves an extra £180,000 on a limited release of 9000 bottles such as this one. That’s a whole lot of man hours or casks or tonnes of barley that they are missing out on. In a way then, I think it is quite admirable that Springbank are only charging £95 a bottle for their latest Local Barley Release. I never thought I’d see the day when I considered £95 quid a reasonable price for a bottle of 16yo whisky but considering the price they could be charging (at least if auctions are anything to go by) and the increased costs associated with the local barley releases (small batch, lower yield, higher production costs etc) I think they’re doing pretty well.​

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Low Machrimore Farm, in Southend, where the barley was grown for the 16yo (and the 1965) Local Barley.
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    Whisky Impressions is run by Kate Watt. Previously at Springbank and then Glenfarclas, I now design some whisky related stuff and write about it, and anything else that takes my fancy, on this blog.

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