Whisky Magazine January 2022

That distillers now emphasise the importance of the cask above all else has always perplexed me. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I don’t appreciate what wood brings to the table. The wonders of how oak species and growing conditions, quarter sawing, timber drying, coopering, toasting and charring, cask size, and seasoning all combine to influence maturation aren’t lost on me. No, my bafflement stems from the fact that the age-old adage of ‘70 per cent of the flavour comes from the wood’ (and variations thereon) simply doesn’t make good business sense in terms of narrative – at least for any company that actually distils is own whisky. And that’s before we get to the thorny issue of whether this old chestnut is even factually accurate. Firstly, the gross overestimation of…

Having returned to in-person tasting events this autumn, Whisky Live is back for more. Whisky Live Ireland returns to Dublin on 11 and 12 March 2022, and our first Whisky Live in Copenhagen takes place on 13 and 14 May. At both events, you will find the usual household names, distributors, independent bottlers, and local distilleries side by side, as well as masterclasses, gastronomic delights and more. In the meantime, Whisky Live At Home, the exciting at-home whisky tasting and viewing experience from the team behind Whisky Live London, is already underway. But it’s not too late to get involved: tickets are still available for just £99, including UK P&P (booking fees apply). The experience includes a tasting pack with 30 x 30ml samples from an incredible roster of whisky distilleries, including three ‘guest…

The Whisky Magazine Hall of Fame is sponsored by AMORIM TOP SERIES INDUCTEE NO.74 JOHN L S GRANT Chairman, J&G Grant Very few people can claim to have spent literally their whole life in the whisky industry, but John L S Grant of Glenfarclas comes very close. Born in 1951, he spent his childhood at Glenfarclas House, where he still lives to this day. Following his school years at Gordonstoun, he joined the Bank of Scotland for three years then worked for Wm Teachers Ltd for a further three years. In 1974, John joined the family business – an astonishing 47 years ago. In the early days, John learned the ropes across the business and then focussed his energy on introducing Glenfarclas to international markets at a time when this was still very unusual, as…

In some whiskey circles, terroir is a dirty word. Or, maybe not so much ‘dirty’, as laughable. When it comes to whiskey and terroir, there is one camp that is open to the idea, and one camp that is decidedly not. There is no middle ground. Terroir in this context is the concept that a place of origin asserts its character on a final product. Most often, terroir is heard of in the context of wine; the environment in which the grapes are grown is widely accepted to have an effect on the flavour of the resulting liquid. However, when it comes to whiskey, many argue that it’s far-fetched to apply the same logic to grains’ terroir influencing flavour. While grapes are fermented and the wine subsequently aged, wine making is still…

To call Tiree an outlier is an understatement. While it is, indeed, an outlier by the geographical definition, what with it being the westernmost island of the Inner Hebrides, it is an outlier in other ways, too. Tiree, which measures 30.25 square miles and boasts 36 miles of coastline, is sometimes called the Hawaii of the North. There is nothing but ocean and weather between its western coast and Canada, and it’s as flat a landmass as you’ll find in the Hebrides – two things that ensure prime conditions for board surfing, windsurfing and kite sailing. Tiree was one of my several stops on an island-hopping jaunt around the Inner Hebrides in October. I had not chosen it for its whisky, something that typically factors into my travel decisions. I decided…

In the artisanal distilling movement, the French wine term terroir is readily borrowed for whisky. Some distillers studiously conduct product experiments, while others merely hype the notion of whisky terroir for marketing upsell. Surprisingly, assigning flavour characteristics to regional and limited geographic confines is a longen-trenched whisky practice. Before the mid-19th century, America had a dozen regional whisky production styles, from Monongahela and Baltimore ryes to Kentucky bourbon and charcoal-rectified Tennessee whiskey. By the late 19th century, Scotland was divided into four, then seven, then five flavour-based whisky regions by the trade. Manufacturers of whisky have long claimed specific provenances, citing celebrated water sources, endemic yeast strains, regional processes, and the cultivation of favoured grain varieties by the local agronomy. Archaeobotanists credit the domestication of barley, wheat, rye, and oat grasses to…