Category: distilling

Jura Distillery Visit- A Single Malt Scotch Whisky Distillery Tour

Last week I visited my 50th distillery/blending house at the Isle of Jura. What made it extra special is that we hit it at 1:30 in the morning.

Though the Isle of Jura is closer to mainland Scotland than Islay, to reach it you take either a plane or ferry to Islay then another quick ferry to Jura. (Jura is the red dot on the map below. Islay is the island to its left.)

(Map produced using Google Maps.)

Jura has far fewer inhabitants than Islay- I think around 200 compared with Islay's 3500- and just one distillery compared with Islay's eight. We arrived on the island after a drive and boat trip, then had time for dinner and a visit to the pub.

It was after we left the pub (they kicked us out at 1:15AM) that we noticed the lights were on in the distillery. "Do you want to see it now?" asked Willie Tait, Jura's Master Distiller, to the last two journalists standing.

"Um, yeah!" we said, and in we went.

(Late night in the distillery.)

The next morning we gathered up everybody for the real tour. Tait calls Jura "A Highland whisky made on an island," which is short for "unpeated." Islay/island whiskies are known for their smoky flavor, which comes from drying sprouted barley with peat smoke.

In the olden days when the first Jura distillery was built back in 1810, the whisky would have been heavily peated as the barley would have been dried locally.

Jura had no distillery for a long time- the current one opened in 1963- and by then everything had changed. Most barley is dried in large commercial facilities then shipped to distilleries. Each distillery can specify the level of peatiness of their malted barley (in phenolic content), and Jura for the most part specifies none at all.

(Malted barley ready for use at Jura.)

The barley is brought to the distillery, milled to break it up, then washed with hot water to release sugars, fermented, and distilled.

The stills on Jura are quite tall- 28 feet- and this produces a spirit that is very light in body, emphasizing the high esther notes ("pear drops") in the whisky.

(Tall stills at Jura.)

Jura is aged in a few kinds of wood. Much of it is what Tait called "American oak." These casks are ex-bourbon barrels that also were used to age scotch and have been rebuilt into hogshead sized barrels that are a little bigger than the bourbon ones. Unlike "ex-bourbon" barrels that are also used on Jura, the American oak barrels aren't still soaking with bourbon and don't add as much character to the spirit- they just let it age slowly without flavoring it so dramatically. Jura also uses ex-sherry butts in smaller amounts.

Tait emphasized that with Jura the point is to get the distillation just where you want it, then not mess around with the spirit too much in the barrel. (You'll see how this is the opposite of what happens at The Dalmore in another post.) Most Jura starts off in American oak then can be finished in other casks to nudge it a little in one direction or the other.

The main Jura bottlings are the 10 and 16 year-olds. The 10 is full of pear flavor and Tait says he would even recommend it served on the rocks as a pre-dinner aperitif. The 16 is more full-flavored and rich, striking a nice balance between friendly flavors and the depth that comes with aging.

Jura does use some peated barley in its production. The Superstition bottling uses 13% malted barley peated to 40ppm phenol, with the rest un-peated barley. Tait calls it a gentle introduction to peated whiskies. I call it tasty.

The last bottling, which is new to the US market, is the Prophecy. It was distilled in 1999 from all peated barley, and aged in some Limousin oak and Oloroso sherry along with the usual American oak and ex-bourbon casks. It's bottled at 46% and non-chill-filtered. So I guess that one is an island whisky made on an island.

Much more to come from my trip in later posts…

June 15, 2010
California Rum

Last week I visited the St. George Spirits distillery to sample their new rum, Agua Libre, and watch them distill more of it.

The new release was distilled from fresh California-grown sugar cane juice (not molasses) and aged for two and a half years in French oak barrels.

From the media contact:

After pressing 25 tons of sugar cane from Kalin Farms of Southern California's Imperial Valley, with a press imported from India, they distilled 750 individually numbered bottles. We still need to slap some labels on the bottles and will probably start
selling them late May/early June for $60 a bottle at the store in
distillery tasting room. Bar Agricole will be the first account to
carry the rum when they open in May.

This isn't the first rum released from St. George Spirits though. They also made Eurydice, a rum exclusive to Smuggler's Cove in San Francisco. Distiller Lance Winters said that one was made from different varieties of sugar cane, and if I remember correctly it was aged in an ex-bourbon barrel as well as French oak. I've just had each of the rums once but if I remember correctly both are grassy and vegetal, but Eurydice is a lot more funky/gamey than Agua Libre.

I really like the Agua Libre and I think fans of agricole rums and Smith & Cross will really like this one as it's sort of a combo of the two styles.

As for the new rum being distilled on the day of my visit, it is made from sugar cane grown in Brawley, California. The grower, Carson T. Kalin, was at the distillery to speak to us and I sort of nerded out on sugar cane. The farm is apparently located at California's last sugar beet processing facility, (I didn't know sugar beets even grew in CA) and so far the sugar cane is purely experimental. Kalin said he is trying to find varieties suited to the hot and dry weather that would be watered by irrigation as there isn't the rainfall of the tropics there. And as sugar can has the opposite growing season of sugar beets, they could always be harvesting.

In the short term, the only thing the cane is being used for is making rum. They harvest the sugar cane by hand rather than by machine, because the sugar cane crushing machine in the distillery needs to use tall stalks of cane rather than the small segments the machine produces. After crushing the cane in the distillery, they ferment the cane juice for 15 days before distilling. I tried the fermented sugar can juice and it was crazy sour and I am glad nobody took a picture of the face I made. Luckily, once through the still and a couple years in the barrel and it fixes it right up.

April 6, 2010
A Trip to Guatemala for Zacapa Rum

The other week I went to Guatemala to learn about Zacapa rum at the source. It was great.

The sugar cane for Zacapa is sourced from the western part of Guatemala, near the Pacific coast where it is hot and humid. Here they cleaned up the cane field for the demonstration of cutting. In reality they burn the fields first to get rid of all the low leaves and any critters that might be hiding. This is pretty common practice where sugar cane is cut by hand, as it is for Zacapa.

Then the cut sugar cane is trucked to the distillery not far away.

At the distillery, the cane is crushed with giant roller mills to extract the juice.

For most rum production, this juice is then processed to make sugar. The sugar is sold separately and the leftovers from the production, molasses, are used to make rum. (There is still enough sugar left in molasses to ferment and be distilled.)

But at Zacapa, like on Martinique (rhum agricole) and in Brazil (cachaca) they don't bother making sugar out of it but turn all the juice into rum and aguardiente. For rhum agricole and cachaca they directly ferment and distill the sugar cane juice. Here at Zacapa, they instead condense the juice into a syrup by filtering and heating the juice to boil off the water. This condensed sugar syrup (they call it 'virgin sugar cane honey') can be stored for up to a year so that they can harvest the sugar cane during its season but distill year-round.

The 'honey' is fermented and distilled here at the distillery near the sugar cane fields. But the newly-distilled rum is barrel aged elsewhere.

All the premium rums made at the distillery (Zacapa and Botran) are trucked up a mountain where the weather is cooler and temperatures are more consistent year-round. This allows for slower aging of the rum.

Rather than truck up the windy roads, we rode in helicopters over the mountainous terrain. I found this terrifying.

It was so cloudy when we arrived we couldn't land at the tiny airport, and had to land in a soccer field a short distance away. This was a *big deal* in the village, and probably a hundred people came out to see us land and slowly get up close, take photos and touch the helicopters. People were super curious and we all felt like rock stars for the attention.

At the aging facility, it was much cooler than at the sugar cane fields.

There the rums are aged and blended according to Zacapa's unique process. I'll address this in tomorrow's post, because it's kinda complicated.

March 2, 2010
Bay Area Distillers Messing with Agave
Hey, it's double-bonus tequila Friday here at Alcademics!

I just learned that my Chronicle story on Bay Area distillers and business owners making tequila here or in Mexico went live today. The print story should be out this Sunday, in the newly-merged Food & Wine sections.

Read the story here.

Highlights
- Julio Bermejo of Tommy's Mexican Restaurant is building his own distillery in Mexico.
- Miles and Marko Karakasevic of Charbay Distillery and Winery made tequila in Mexico at the famous La Altena distillery.
- Lance Winters and Jorg Rupf shipped agave to Alameda and distilled it there. This lead to a series of unusual efforts.
Each distiller is taking an entirely different approach to the process.

Go read it, there are some juicy news items in there.
January 30, 2009
A day with Charbay

The other week I sat down on the patio behind Swirl on Castro with Marko Karakasevic and Jenni soon-to-be Karakasevic of Charbay and tasted through their line of products.

Charbay is a family-run winery and distillery in Napa Valley. And boy do these people like to play with the still- in addition to wine, they make flavored vodka, rum, whiskey, walnut liqueur, grappa, pastis, port, and now some aperitifs. It's hard to keep up with them.

The aperitifs are neither eau de vie nor typical liqueurs, but flavored fortified wines. Currently they produce a pomegranate and a green tea flavor, which they like to think of as cocktails-in-a-glass. Importantly for retailers, these can be served at beer and wine-only venues.

We then tasted through the vodka line. When they make vodka at Charbay, really they're making extractions that are added to plain vodka to flavor it. (Most flavored vodkas are vodka plus flavors purchased from flavor companies.) Not only is this unique, they make their extractions using whole fruit- not just the peel or juice. They throw the entire fruit (okay, not the pomegranate, but the citrus) into a leaf shredder and into the tanks, then distill the mixture to extract the flavor components they're looking for. Marko told me he was able to get the Meyer lemon flavor less bitter than before (emphasizing the pith less and peel more). The grapefruit flavor is as bitter as it should be.

The Tahitian vanilla rum is triple pot distilled and made from concentrated sugar cane juice (not molasses) from Hawaii. All rums are made from sugar cane products. Rhum agricole and cachaca are made from sugar cane juice. Most rums are made from molasses (the leftovers after sugar is extracted from sugar cane juice). Ron Zacapa is made from a form of concentrated sugar cane juice without the sugar taken out. The sugar cane juice used by Charbay is flash dehydrated under a vaccuum to remove the water and concentrate the liquid. I want to research how this is different from what Zacapa uses. Project!

I think they should just call their whiskey "weed-lovers-whiskey", because it really tastes like marijuana. This is the second release of the product that was pot distilled from pilsner beer with three kinds of hops (this is probably where the weed aromas come in) and aged six years in new barrels. The first release was after three years in barrels.

Finally, they're going to release a pomegranate dessert wine (they really like the pomegranate over there) that smells like it's going to be ultra-syrupy, but is just pleasantly sweet. A nice way to end a meal, or a tasting session.

To sample the products in person, check out the early happy hour at Tra Vigna in Napa Valley, during the weekly Charbay tasting. Hopefully Jenni and Marko will be there, because they're really fun people with whom to share a drink. Or ten.

October 24, 2008
Maker’s Mark Distillery Visit

As part of a visit to the Kentucky Bourbon Festival, I visited the Jim Beam and Maker's Mark distilleries in September. Today I'll talk about visiting Maker's Mark.

The distillery has been around since 1805, but was purchased by Mr. Samuels, founder of Maker's Mark, in the early 1950's. This distillery will receive 70,000 visitors this year, and not just because they're fans of the product- this is one of the most beautiful distilleries I've ever seen. With its little bridges, common color theme, trees, and lawns it's more like a college campus. In fact when I was there in September the tours going through almost looked like summer tours for prospective students.

Maker's is different than other bourbons as it is 70% corn (all non-GMO) plus malted barley and "soft red winter wheat" instead of the rye in most other brands. Also pretty unique is that at this distillery they make only one bourbon- only one product at all.

Also at the distillery, they use an "anaerobic processor" to capture methane biogass
from their waste, which allows them to reduce their natural gas use by
15-30 percent. They also sell off their spent grains for animal feed,
but I'm not sure at what point that happens.

One thing I learned about Kentucky bourbon is that the products produced here are tied to the distiller who produced them (or popularized them), rather than the company. When people talk about a bourbon, they're talking about a distiller, and not usually the current one. When you talk about Jim Beam and the Small Batch Bourbon collection, people think about Booker Noe, who recently died, not so much Fred Noe who is the current voice of the company. When Fred Noe talks about the line, he talks about his father, not himself.

That was also the case at Maker's Mark- Master Distiller Kevin Smith said that his job is to keep Maker's Mark the same as Bill Samuels Sr. created it, and if they created a new product then it wouldn't be a brand extension, it would probably be something new. When they do special editions of Maker's with a different color of wax on the bottle, it's still the same whisky inside.

Anyway, I think it's interesting how different companies with a history are loyal to the company philosophy or the founder or the product itself.

Maker's rotates their barrels in the warehouse, and is the only bourbon distillery to still rotate all of the inventory. The barrels are first put at the top of the warehouse for three years, then spend another three at the bottom.

Beyond its flavor, Maker's is known for its branding- the iconic bottle with the red dripping wax unique to each bottle. The bottle design, wax seal, and the "maker's mark" itself were created by Mrs. Samuels, Bill Samuels' wife. The dripping wax is actually trademarked, which is why you don't see other brands doing it.

Those are all of my fun facts for now. More pictures from my Maker's Mark distillery visit are here.

October 9, 2008
A visit to the Jim Beam distillery

In September I visited the Jim Beam and Maker's Mark distilleries as part of the Kentucky Bourbon Festival. For all the distilleries I've been to in 10 different countries, I'd never seen a bourbon distillery.

The Claremont Jim Beam distillery is a huge facility, and one of two where the product is distilled. They receive tons of grain daily, and distill whiskey 24 hours a day, 6 days each week. The annual output is around 6 million cases of bourbon each year. (I believe they also distill the small batch bourbon collection here- Booker's, Baker's, Knob Creek, and Basil Hayden.) Beam uses 70 warehouses to store their 1.7-1.8 million barrels of bourbon that are aging.

Beam is made from corn, rye, and barley. Interestingly, we get GMO corn in the US bourbon, but they distill, age, and bottle non-GMO spirit separately for export to Europe where they have restrictions against GMO products. (I definitely want to learn more about this so if anyone has a non-hysterical GMO book/video they can recommend let me know.)

The bourbon is first column distilled in the "beer still" that's about six stories high. It is then distilled a second time in the "doubler" which they say looks like a pot still but is continuous. (We didn't see it.)

The barrel warehouses are not only enormous, they're very tall- nine stories, with each story holding three tiers of barrels. At the top of the warehouse where it's hot, the barrels gain proof over time as more water evaporates out of the barrel (through the wood) than spirit. At the bottom of the warehouse, the whiskey loses proof as more alcohol evaporates than water.

When selecting barrels to use for Beam, they take barrels from each level of the warehouse to make up the final blend. For the Booker's bottling, which is cask-strength and unfiltered, they only take barrels from one middle floor.

After aging, the barrels are emptied, diluted, and bottled. You can find more pictures on my Flickr page here. In tomorrow's post, I'll talk about the bottling facility- with videos!

October 7, 2008