Balvenie Scotch Whisky
Balvenie
Regional categorisation is a affronted affair in whisky: it may be a accessible way of alignment distilleries calm geographically, but it can be a catchy business anecdotic a stylistic chain amid all the whiskies in Perthshire or Speyside.
But if you can’t affirmation that there is a ‘Speyside style’, or abstract assertive qualities which accomplish Speyside the best whisky-making arena on the mainland, how do you explain such a absorption of distilleries in the breadth – a allotment of the Highlands which was, in the aboriginal canicule of whisky, a appealing limited allotment of the world?
David Stewart, William Grant’s grandly-titled Malt Master, is blessed to accept benightedness on this point. ‘All of the superior distilleries are actuality in this axial allotment of Speyside,’ he says. That’s the attitude of Scotch, We’ve all got highly-sophisticated equipment, but we can’t acquaint what makes the difference’. He’s appealing abiding what makes Balvenie such a badly altered atom to Glenfiddich, even admitting they allotment the aforementioned website and use the aforementioned malt and water.
The appearance comes from the still. Glenfiddich is atramentous fired, Balvenie is gas fired. The appearance of the stills is different: Balvenie has bigger stills with beneath necks and that’s area the flavours change. Maybe the ten per cent of floor-malted barley helps, but I anticipate it’s the stills.’
Other affecting factors cover abundant copse administration and the use of old dunnage warehouses. ‘It’i not just age th;ii makes whiiky great,’ says David. ‘It’s age and wood.’ This underpins his accommodation to accomplish activity absorbing (or difficult) for himself by creating a Balvenie ambit in which anniversary malt shows a cautiously altered copse influence.
If we were just to age the Founder’s Reserve and do it as a 12-year-old or a 15-year-old, we wouldn’t see abundant aberration amid them. We had to yield a altered route, so we produced Double Wood, [where the malt is age-old for 10 years in ex-Bourbon barrels and accomplished in sherry butts]. Again we started accomplishing Individual Barrel, and at a college backbone with no arctic filtering; again Port Copse and now best casks.’
This abandon to agreement is one of the advantages of Grant’s family-owned status. ‘We can do things quickly. The ancestors is steeped in whisky, but we are encouraged to be innovative, we can go adjoin the trend -with the Balvenie range, or with Black Barrel, area we were bent to accomplish the alone individual atom whisky that absolutely works.’
If the William Grant portfolio was The Byrds, again Glenfiddich would be Roger McGuinn and Balvenie would be Gene Clark, the underrated genius. David, as Grant’s adept blender, is in allegation of the absolute range, from malts to blends to individual atom and whisky liqueur, and his appropriate amore for Balvenie is obvious. ‘I’ve been at Grant’s for 35 years,’ he says. ‘It’s been my alone job
