Richard Gantlett, our biodynamic barley farmer, has recently completed a thesis on soils as part of his Doctorate of Philosophy in Agriculture from the University of Reading. “Agricultural soils are everywhere: they occupy roughly 37% of the earth’s surface…”
We fired a few questions at him to find out what’s going on beneath the ground on his biodynamic farm, Yatesbury.
Richard Gantlett [RG]: In a natural, healthy soil it’s the soil organisms that feed the plants through a network of interacting species. For example, by integral cell connections of fungi and plants, the fungi provide plants with nutrients like phosphorous and in exchange the plants give the fungi carbon compounds like sugars. The vitality of plants and their seeds are therefore reliant on the vitality of the soil, indeed the soil life can flavour the plants and seeds.
RG: Soils are multi-talented! They provide clean air, water and food.
Our civilisation relies on growing food and fibres (e.g. for clothes) in soil. All terrestrial food-webs begin with the soil.
Degraded soils increase flood and drought, because soil is like a sponge that can hold water. If the soil is washed or blown away then we simply cannot grow food, or it becomes more expensive to do so.
There is 10 times more carbon stored in soil than in a forest; degraded soils release carbon into the air.
Damaging the soil also pollutes the oceans – think of algal blooms in the ocean that have resulted from nitrates (and phosphates) leaching from the land. That means, therefore, all of earth’s biodiversity relies on healthy soils.
RG: I see a new vision for farming where each farm is individual, each farmer can mitigate for climate change through growing soils and adapt to climate change by … growing soil.
Each farmer can do this according to their skills, knowledge, location, climate, and market. In this vision each farmer is supported by a network of advice and research funded by a vibrant, valued and flourishing farming community.
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The Biodynamic Method in 100 words 
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The figures below state the average representative values per serving giving 10g alcohol, or per standard 25ml measure:
| Product | The Classic Laddie | |
|---|---|---|
| Alcohol (% by volume) | 50% | |
| Nutritional values: | Per 10 g alcohol (25,3 ml serving): | Per 25 ml serving: |
| Alcohol (g) | 10 | 10 |
| Calories (Kcal) | 69 | 69 |
| Fat (g) | 0 | 0 |
| – of which Saturates (g) | 0 | 0 |
| Carbohydrates (g) | 0 | 0 |
| – of which Sugar (g) | 0 | 0 |
| Protein (g) | 0 | 0 |
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.
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.
The figures below state the average representative values per serving giving 10g alcohol, or per standard 25ml measure:
| Product | Islay Barley 2009 | |
|---|---|---|
| Alcohol (% by volume) | 50% | |
| Nutritional values: | Per 10 g alcohol (25,3 ml serving): | Per 25 ml serving: |
| Alcohol (g) | 10 | 10 |
| Calories (Kcal) | 69 | 69 |
| Fat (g) | 0 | 0 |
| – of which Saturates (g) | 0 | 0 |
| Carbohydrates (g) | 0 | 0 |
| – of which Sugar (g) | 0 | 0 |
| Protein (g) | 0 | 0 |
The figures below state the average representative values per serving giving 10g alcohol, or per standard 25ml measure:
| Product | Port Charlotte Scottish Barley | |
|---|---|---|
| Alcohol (% by volume) | 50% | |
| Nutritional values: | Per 10 g alcohol (25,3 ml serving): | Per 25 ml serving: |
| Alcohol (g) | 10 | 10 |
| Calories (Kcal) | 69 | 69 |
| Fat (g) | 0 | 0 |
| – of which Saturates (g) | 0 | 0 |
| Carbohydrates (g) | 0 | 0 |
| – of which Sugar (g) | 0 | 0 |
| Protein (g) | 0 | 0 |
The figures below state the average representative values per serving giving 10g alcohol, or per standard 25ml measure:
| Product | Octomore 07.1 | |
|---|---|---|
| Alcohol (% by volume) | 59.5% | |
| Nutritional values: | Per 10 g alcohol (25,3 ml serving): | Per 25 ml serving: |
| Alcohol (g) | 10 | 12 |
| Calories (Kcal) | 69 | 82 |
| Fat (g) | 0 | 0 |
| – of which Saturates (g) | 0 | 0 |
| Carbohydrates (g) | 0 | 0 |
| – of which Sugar (g) | 0 | 0 |
| Protein (g) | 0 | 0 |
