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The “What, Where and How” of Barley Provenance

IN New Releases 6th December 2017/by Carl Reavey
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Single malt Scotch whiskies have traditionally been presented accompanied by age statements, but Bruichladdich have long argued that while age is interesting it is by no means the only determinant of quality and style.  Other factors that have a huge influence are the quality, type and location of the casks in which the whisky is matured, and also the provenance of our fundamental raw material, barley.

We have pioneered the creation of variety and nuance in whisky by treating barley in a manner similar to the way that winemakers treat grapes.  That is to say that winemakers too are interested in the  What, Where,and How – the varieties, origins and growing regimes they employ to bring home their harvests. We are used to seeing grape variety, origin and vintage specified on bottles of wine as a result – and we now often see “organic” or even “bio-dynamic” designations on wine bottles as well. We have recently released two more single malts that illustrate how we embrace this approach.

Adam tells us of a “Honey-soft texture with rich and malty sweetness and great depth”.

The first is ‘The Organic 2009’ which was distilled using grain grown organically by William Rose at his ‘Mid Coul Farm’ near Inverness.  This whisky is certified ‘organic’ from barley to bottle by the Biodynamic Association and is described as being “deliciously creamy with the barley notes very much to the fore” by our head distiller Adam Hannett.

The second release is “Bere Barley 2008:Islay Grown” which was distilled from a grist prepared from an ancient six-row variety of the grain grown by Dunlossit Estate on Islay.  Adam tells us of a “Honey-soft texture with rich and malty sweetness and great depth”.

The aim with all these uber-provenance releases is not to ask whether one is better than any other, but simply to demonstrate that there are flavour differences and that these are interesting for their own sake.  There is also an increasing awareness that modern petrochemical-based agricultural systems combined with intensive selective breeding regimes are threatening the sustainability of farming and undermining the breadth of the gene pool.

So while the original motivation behind these releases may have been sensory exploration, there is also a wider environmental context that deserves our attention. These new single malts join our growing family of uber-provenance single malts. These include drams created from; (What) six-row and the more familiar two-row barley varieties; (Where) barley grown on the Scottish mainland, Islay and Orkney; and (How) grain grown using organic, minimal intervention and conventional farming techniques. 18,000 bottles of each of the new whiskies have been released for sale in specialist outlets all over the world.  They are also available on-line from the Laddieshop.

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WMD – THE STORY OF THE YELLOW SUBMARINE HAS BEEN FULL OF CHARACTER AND CHARACTERS RIGHT FROM THE BEGINNING.

It started with our friend ‘Demolition Dave’ helping Duncan McGillivray and his gang to demolish the old Inverleven distillery – buying up all the old equipment for scrap and loading it onto barges on the Clyde. All so Duncan had some spares to keep Bruichladdich running in the days of No Money.

As this odd flotilla was being towed round the Mull of Kintyre and up to Islay, Laddie MD Mark Reynier received an email from the Defence Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) in the USA who had been monitoring distillery webcams on the grounds that our processes could have been ‘tweaked’ to produce the dreaded WMD. ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’.

Never one to allow the opportunity for a good story to pass him by, or to get his beloved distillery in the news, Reynier embellished the tale, which soon grew to involve spies and the CIA and visits by weapons inspectors. All of which made great headline-grabbing copy in the febrile media atmosphere then prevailing around WMD.

One of the stills from Inverleven was dutifully set up outside the old Victorian buildings, and became an iconic sight, with a pair of Duncan’s old wellie boots sticking out of the top to represent those weapons inspectors searching for dangerous chemicals deep in its copper bottomed interior.

A special bottling was commissioned (of course) and dubbed the ‘Whisky of Mass Distinction’ (geddit?) and much hilarity ensued. At least among the Laddies, the rest of the whisky industry having long since given up on the noisily irreverent rebels.

WMDII: A YELLOW SUBMARINE

Things were about to get even more eccentric because, shortly afterwards, Islay fisherman John Baker was heading home to Port Ellen when he spotted something awash in the sea off the bow of his boat. Being a resourceful man, he attached a rope to said object and towed it into the pier where Gordon Currie lifted it out of the water. It proved to be a very beautiful yellow submarine.

Very conveniently, the yellow vessel had ‘Ministry of Defence’ and a telephone number stencilled on it, which was of course immediately called. What happened next was to become the stuff of legend. He was connected to the Royal Navy. “I have found your yellow submarine” said John. “We haven’t lost a yellow submarine” said the Navy. Which was an odd response as the evidence to the contrary was overwhelming.

John and Gordon then loaded the submarine onto a lorry and took it to a secret location in Port Ellen (actually fellow fisherman Harold Hastie’s back garden). The local newspaper was called, then the nationals, and the following day the red-tops were full of pictures of the two friends astride the lethal-looking machine, carrying fishing rods, and asking: “Has anybody lost a yellow submarine?”

Hilarious… unless you were the Royal Navy – who did eventually admit to it being theirs. HMS Blyth, the minesweeper that lost it, eventually came to pick it up, slipping into the pier at dawn to winch it aboard. By that time, Bruichladdich had (of course) commissioned another bottling, WMD2: The Yellow Submarine, and a box of lovely liquid was graciously offered, and accepted by the captain as a goodwill gesture.

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