FEATURE: GRAIN • 11 PHOTOGRAPHY: ROB McDOUGALL
The word T
WORDS: TOM BRUCE-GARDINE
here is a clear-cut hierarchy in Scotch whisky drinking, reinforced by almost every book and article on the subject, and
by the prices charged. You start with blends and stretch up to single malts on special occasions and when you can afford them. There is a small, hybrid category somewhere in the middle called ‘blended malts’ which some may stumble upon, but that is basically it. Except it is not quite the whole story. Scotland also produces an ocean of grain whisky, though barely a drop is drunk on its own. Everything else disappears into a vast blending vat to re-emerge as The Famous Grouse, Teacher’s, Bells and countless other blends. Even where 90% of the whisky in the bottle comes
from one of the seven grain distilleries still in operation, the drinker is kept blissfully unaware. Blended Scotch whisky brands talk only of their malt content. So is grain whisky something to
be ashamed of? Is it simply there to add ballast to a blend? If you consider the methods of
production, there is no contest in terms of visual appeal. While the noble spirit destined to become malt whisky trickles gently from a pot still, new-make grain spirit gushes out of a continuous still. The former is a beautiful vessel of burnished copper, while the latter has all the industrial charm of an oil refinery. Grain spirit is distilled at just under the maximum strength allowed in Scotch whisky production of 94.8% abv, only a degree or two less than vodka. By contrast, the average strength achieved
It’s plentiful, strong and produced on an industrial scale. But has the single malt world been too quick to dismiss grain?
in a malt distillery would be at least 20% below that, allowing all manner of flavoursome trace elements to slip through into the final cut. Measuring the esters at filling strength, there are 650 parts per million compared to just 50 in grain spirit. Yet, you would be wrong to assume that there is no distillery character from a continuous still. Dr Jim Beveridge, master blender
for Johnnie Walker at Diageo, believes that “grains are just as important as malts in the way they add sweetness and balance to a blend, and the idea that they’re just a canvass on which the blender paints with malts, is one that irritates the hell out of me. With experience you can definitely tell which distillery a grain whisky came from.”
CONTINUED OVERLEAF THE SCOTCH MALT WHISKY SOCIETY
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