Scotch Whisky

Wherever a Scotch whisky may end up, its journey will always begin with the seeds of a cereal crop. The UK’s Agricultural and Horticultural Development Board (AHDB) produces an annual Recommended List of favoured crop varieties that are tested for yield and disease resistance, among other parameters. For the 2023 harvest, the AHDB included 13 varieties of two-row malting barley on its spring barley list, and three varieties on its winter barley list. If you want to distil with that malted barley, rather than brew, the list gets narrower; the UK’s Malting Barley Committee (MBC) only has four varieties in its 2023 approved harvest list. Laureate is king among these; first put on the AHDB Recommended List in 2016, it now accounts for some 50 per cent of the UK’s…

There is much to feel positive about in the world of Scotch whisky at the moment, but a dark cloud is looming on the horizon. At the time of writing, there are no fewer than 136 malt distilleries in operation around Scotland, with many more under construction or at the planning stage in locations across all regions of the country. Additionally, the lost giants of Rosebank in the Lowlands and Port Ellen on Islay are well on the way back to production. When it comes to the practical business of making whisky, many of the new generation of start-up distilleries are not just copying existing models – they are looking backwards to the best of the past, and forwards to the future. For many years, most major distillers and the…

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Time travel is a curious thing. And flickers of it exist outside the realm of science fiction – one such instance is walking up to The Vaults in Leith, the spiritual home of the Scotch Malt Whisky Society (SMWS). Pace across the cobbles or up the stone stairs to the handsome door, and you’re transported back in time. Once a bonded warehouse, the noble building dates back to 1787, but it was nearly two centuries before it became the space so loved by Society members. “The Vaults was the first thing that was acquired, even before the casks,” remarks David Ridley, managing director at publicly listed Artisanal Spirits Company. He considers himself a “sort of custodian, a guardian” of what was created from the outset. The business bought SMWS from…

The Lowland region, which once produced some famous names and gave rise to the first of the great whisky families, the Haigs and the Steins, has, much like the wider industry, seen its fortunes both rise and fall over the past century – and now those fortunes are rising again. Whiskies produced beneath the imaginary ‘Highland line’, which was first laid out by the Wash Act of 1784 and runs from the Firth of Clyde (Greenock) on the west coast to where the River Tay meets the North Sea at Dundee on the east, have traditionally been known for a very specific style, defined by the Scotch Whisky Association (SWA) as being ‘soft and smooth’ and ‘lighter’ than those found elsewhere in the country. However, the existence of this unified…

Ultimately you only learn by doing it,” Julieann Fernandez says brightly. Along with master distiller Brendan McCarron, we’ve rendezvoused at Highland single malt Scotch distillery Deanston, and we’re chatting matchmaking. However, this isn’t about a quest for human connection. More edifyingly, this is about spirit – specifically, matching distillate with cask types. Which, it turns out, can be just as unpredictable as pairing up people. On the surface, it’s fairly straightforward. To be called Scotch whisky, new-make spirit must be aged in oak casks no larger than 700 litres for at least three years. In Scotland, of course. But with more than 140 distilleries and myriad approaches across the country, there is more to maturation than meets the eye. Luckily for Distell – the parent company for, among others, Deanston,…