Marquis de Montesquiou is an armagnac brand owned by Pernod Ricard. It is their smallest production facility of all their brands, according to cellarmaster Eric Durand. The brand was created after WWII.
Eau De Vie
They do not own vineyards nor a winery: they purchase eau de vie (distilled grape brandy) and produce armagnac with it.
The eau de vie they buy is primarily from the Bas Armagnac region, but they do buy some from the Tenareze which Durand says adds structure and freshness. They buy primarily from 10 producers, a little bit more from others.
The grape varietals they use are:
50% Baco "for the flesh"
40% Ugni Blanc "for the skeleton"
10% Folle Blanche "for the spirit"
They buy only eau de vie distilled in the traditional continuous armagnac still. They have contracts with several distillers.
Aging and Blending
We visited the warehouse, named the Cathedral for obvious reasons. It holds 1000 barrels. It was built in 1975, and it looks it.
They age only in local Gascon oak in 400 liter barrels. They buy 20-50 barrels per year- not a lot! Some of the eau de vie is aged in the producers cellars – this is because some of those are more humid than this drier one. It is moved to this warehouse later.
Durand says if you add water to dilute armagnac all at once it's called "breaking" the armagnac. Instead they dilute slowly 3-4 times over the course of aging. Durand says when you add water little by little it increases fatty acid sedimentation, which is apparently a good thing during aging. (They will come out just before bottling as they chill filter.)
The VS and VSOP have color added, the rest do not.
The VSOP is aged 8-20 years
The XO is aged 20-40 years
The 1989 vintage is 100% folle blanche grapes from the Bas Armagnac region. It's bottled cask strength at 42.1% ABV
Cuvee D'Artagnan includes some vintages from 1896, 1929, and the youngest armagnac in the blend is from 1974.
Last year I visited Limoncello di Capri located on the island of Capri south of Naples in Italy. The liqueur is assembled on the island from ingredients produced on the mainland, including the lemon peels. These come from the Sorrento area nearby.
The Sorrento region has a long history with citrus. During the Greek/Roman period there were lemon trees planted for their beauty in the area. In the 17th century Jesuits started cultivating lemons to use as disinfectant against cholera. The beginning of the 19th Century saw the use of the pergola system I'll talk about in a minute.
Limone di Sorrento IGP – Lemon Laws
The lemons here as well as the limoncello are IGP products – Protected Geographic Indication like AOC or DOC. The IGP are includes both Sorrento and Capri. Here are some of the IGP Limone di Sorrento laws I was able to pick up:
Lemons must be covered in winter (see below).
Only natural fertilizer can be used.
They must be grown within the region
There are further regulations for limoncello below
The name for the lemons of the region is Ovale de Sorrento. The fruits take about one year to grow, though the tree flowers 3-4 times annually and they harvest fruit several times as well. The soil is volcanic and helps produce less acidic lemons than in other areas, but these lemons require special care to thrive in this region at all. We visited a lemon grove called Il Giardino di Vigliano.
*Note that somehow I destroyed all my pictures from this trip, so these photos come from Stephanie Fray of Conundrum Marketing.
Photo: Stephanie Fray of Conundrum Marketing
The lemon trees/branches are grafted onto wild orange tree rootstock. Those roots are bigger and hardier and live longer (200 years) than typical lemon trees, so they extend the life of the lemon trees.
Some of the trees have wild orange roots and base of the trunk, followed by a grafted regular (not wild) orange trunk, and then lemon branches grafted onto that (like some sort of citrus turduckin). They can only graft during April and May, and have only a 60-70% success rate in grafting, so this is not easy to accomplish.
Photo: Photo: Stephanie Fray of Conundrum Marketing
In the winter, the region cools down and gets windy, so they use the pergola system to protect the trees. Chestnut wood pieces make an awning structure over the top of the trees, and in the winter nylon netting or pagliarelle is spread across the top.
Pagliarelle (which sounds like "pie-a-rella") is just an old covering made from small wood slats. Both these coverings keep the temperature more stable in the cold months. In the photo below, the little houses actually hold the wooden slats which can be spread out over the pergola.
Photo: Stephanie Fray of Conundrum Marketing
Photo: Stephanie Fray of Conundrum Marketing
Northern Lemons vs. Southern Lemons
I previously visited another limoncello facility south of this area along the Amalfi Coast, and was surprised to see how different the lemons are grown while not being very far apart. Read about my visit with Pallini Limoncello here.
Those lemons are of the variety sfusato. The trees grow on terraced cliffs and the branches are supported by a pergola. (In Sorrento the pergola just holds up the roof.) Those lemons also grow faster and larger, have less essential oil in their peels, and are more acidic, according to my hosts.
Harvesting and Peeling Lemons for Limoncello di Capri
Limoncello di Capri purchases from about 30 different growers. They do not own the orchards but they employ 2 people whose job is to check on the quality of the lemons from the trees through the bottling process.
This is all tracked, so that the company could look at a bottle's serial number and tell you where the lemons came from used in it.
The lemons are hand-harvested and transported to the processing facility. Then they are soaked, then sprayed and brushed/polished.
Next they go into the peeling machine. Eighty Five percent of the lemon – all the fruit part – is discarded as they only want the peel.
Photo: Stephanie Fray of Conundrum Marketing
Photo: Stephanie Fray of Conundrum Marketing
Photo: Stephanie Fray of Conundrum Marketing
The peelers at this facility are adapted cantaloupe peelers that can peel lemons 4 at a time. Here it is at regular speed:
And in slow-motion:
The peeled lemons are put into plastic bags, vacuum sealed to remove air, and frozen in 6 pound bags. They are frozen because they will be used to make limoncello year-round, while the lemon harvesting is only for part of the year.
Photo: Stephanie Fray of Conundrum Marketing
Photo: Stephanie Fray of Conundrum Marketing
Limoncello Laws
There are IGP laws for IGP Limone di Sorrento limoncellos, which can be produced in Sorrento and on Capri.
It must be produced, peeled, and bottled within the IGP
No colorant is allowed and no chemicals can be used in the processing
They must have a minimum of 250 grams of lemon per liter. (Limoncello di Capri uses 330 g/l in their formula.)
That number is the quantity of whole lemons used. So, since Limoncello di Capri uses 15% of the lemon (the peel), that means there are 330 x .15 = 49.5 grams per liter of lemon peels used.
Life Gives You Too Many Lemons
With 85% of each lemon discarded, I asked about any recycling/reuse. They said that some lemons are in fact juiced. Some of the lemons are composted, some are disposed of as industrial waste, and the city uses some as a disinfectant in its water treatment program.
Assembling the Limoncello on the Island of Capri
Capri is an island a short ferry ride from the town of Sorrento. It is full of windy roads and tall cliffs, which means there are great views from nearly everywhere on the island.
If I understood correctly, not only is Limoncello di Capri the only commercial limoncello made on the island, it is the only production facility of any kind on the island.
It was also the first brand to use and trademark the name "limoncello" meaning "little lemon", but plenty of other people used the term. The Italian Supreme Court ruled that limoncello was a generic name in 2002, so they got a bit stiffed on that one.
The lemon peels are removed from their vacuum-sealed bags and added to 2000 liter tanks of 96% ABV grain alcohol. The lemon peels are infused for 5 days in the alcohol, and by the end the mixture is down to 87% ABV. They use lemon peels collected at different parts of the season to control for natural variation.
The lemon peels are then filtered out and sugar and water is added. The final sugar content is 240 grams per liter.
Photo: Stephanie Fray of Conundrum Marketing
Photo: Stephanie Fray of Conundrum Marketing
Photo: Stephanie Fray of Conundrum Marketing
They bottle the product at 32 percent alcohol, which they say is slightly higher than other brands because the product is all natural and more alcohol is needed as a preservative. (They also say that only 20% of limoncellos are made with only lemons- the rest have flavorings and colorings.)
The bottled limoncello is then shipped out. They bottle on the island in the mornings and ship out the limoncello in the afternoons. Because the island only has small roads, their van can only take one palette of limoncello at a time. The driver loads up 7 palettes per day.
In bad weather, they can't get supplies in or limoncello off the island, so production goes on hold.
They produce 800,000 bottles per year at this tiny facility.
A Model of Inefficiency
It doesn't take an efficiency expert to see that this is a crazy system: Bottles, alcohol, sugar , and lemon peels are shipped over from the mainland, mixed together, then sent back to the mainland. It would make a lot more sense to do this all on the mainland, but they're sticking with the brand's heritage and producing on the island.
The brand history dates back to the 1800s, when hotel owner Vincenza Canale would prepare the drink for hotel guests. There were traditions of making homemade lemon liqueur but according to the brand nobody thought to commercialize it until much later. (As far as I can tell, commercial limoncello only began in the 1980s.)
The brand Limoncello di Capri was not launched until 1988 by the descendants of Vincenza.
We visited the little hotel where the brand was founded, Casa Mariantonia, which was apparently only the second hotel built on the island. There is still a lemon grove in the yard, where we had drinks.
I think of bottles of spirits with strong regional connections as postcards of flavor. Limoncello di Capri will always remind me of the sunny island where it's made.
Last fall I visited the growing, drying, and production facilities for Ancho Reyes chile liqueur near Puebla, Mexico. I learned a lot about chiles.
We flew into the city of Puebla, and the chiles are grown not far away in San Martín Texmelucan de Labastida.
Ancho chiles are the dried version of poblano peppers, much like chipotles are dried jalapenos.
Poblanos: The Reaping
We visited a field where the chiles for Ancho Reyes were being harvested. These fields are 2000 meters above sea level in a volcanic valley. Water comes down from nearby volcanoes and makes the fields very wet . We had to travel standing in the back of a big truck to get through all the mud on the roads. The water is good, because poblano chiles require lots of it.
In March and April the seeds are germinated and planted. They are delicate plants and require lots of care. The plants are supported by lines of string, so that they won't fall in the mud when the heavy peppers grow on them. It takes about 6 months before harvest.
Poblano chiles are harvested one time per year. The first ones harvested are sold as fresh green chiles.
Chiles that will become dried anchos are left on the vine longer than the ones harvested for fresh poblanos. Leaving them longer on the field concentrates flavors and sugars.
All There Is To Know about the Drying Game
Around a bend on a small street in the town of San Martín Texmelucan de Labastida, you come across a cement fence with cacti on the top in place of barbed wire. Behind it are guard dogs; a double-incentive not to hop over the top.
Inside is what looks like the foundation for a large building not yet started – a big patch of dirt, but it has been combed up to wide plateaus with narrow ditches dug through every ten feet or so. On top of those raised beds are zillions of drying poblano peppers in a limited rainbow of colors from red to brown, some still with their green stems sticking out.
Beneath the peppers are what looks like a hay mat (actually small encino oak), which allows air to flow around the peppers as they dry.
The chiles dry for between 15 and 30 days here, being flipped over every 3 days or so. The drying process both concentrates the flavor and sugar in the chiles, makes them shelf stable, and gives them more flavor complexity according to our hosts.
Not all chiles you'll find in stores are dried this way – many now come from China, where they are dried in ovens.
The Blend Of It All
The recipe for Ancho Reyes is "inspired by" a recipe from 1927.
The actual recipe is:
90% Ancho chile peppers
10% Guajilla and Pacilla peppers
A small amount of secret ingredients
Alcohol – 55% ABV cane syrup from Veracruz, Mexico
Sugar syrup, also from Mexico
Guajilla peppers are hot and spicy, while pacilla are more earthy. Dried chiles come into the production facility in big bags.
The chiles are cut up with scissors. Some but not all of the seeds are discarded to get the right amount of heat in the final product.
Then the pieces of chli are infused into 1000 liter tanks of alcohol. About four of those huge bags go into each 1000L tank. They are stirred once per week and infuse for around 6 months.
Each of the three chile varieties are infused separately, then the product is blended at the end along with sugar. When they blend, there is no set amount of sugar – they match it to the heat of the product each time.
All the color of Ancho Reyes comes from the chiles; none is added.
I visited a bunch of cognac houses in the fall of 2014, and spent nearly a whole day with Cognac Hine at their vineyards, winery, distillery, and blending house.
I didn't realize that there are 250 or so cognac houses, so my visit to less than 20 of them is small potatoes. The big potatoes belong to Hennessy, which makes 42% of all cognac. They, plus the other 3 of the Big Four houses, create 80% of cognac sold. Hine does about 1 percent of Hennessy's volume.
The Vineyards
Hine owns 70 hectares under vine in Grande Champagne but don't grow all of their own grapes – they produce about 25% of their own needs.
Cellarmaster Eric Forget says that in 2014 (I was there just before harvest) they expected to harvest grapes that would make 9.5% alcohol at about 3.4 pH. Just about all harvesting is mechanical in Cognac. Hine rents the picking machines and grape presses to make their portion of wine.
Forget says that vines in the region are typically sprayed to prevent mildew, and it is difficult to make organic wine in the region because of the humid weather. Near to harvest time, they can't spray anymore as that could get into the wine.
When the grape juice arrives at the winery, they start fermentation with dry yeast in stainless steel tanks at 17 degrees Celsius. They temperature control fermentation and storage because for cognac you can't add sulfur or anything else as a preservative while the wine waits to be distilled.
Distilling For Hine
The distillery we visited isn't owned by the brand, but they're independent distillers who make almost all of Hine's brandy. (Hine is only 10% of the distillery's business on the other hand.)
The wine that comes into the distillery is distilled up to 30% ABV after the first distillation. They do make a heads and tails cut after the first as well as the second distillation. The second distillation brings the spirit up to 70-72% ABV. Each distillation takes about 12 hours.
It takes approximately 10 liters of wine to produce 1 liter of spirit.
When a brand like Hine has wine distilled for them, they are able to specify certain distillation parameters. These may include whether or not to distill on the lees, that the heads cuts are 30 liters or whatever, how long the distillation time should be, the temperature of distillation, etc.
For Hine, they distill the wine on the lees, which are the bits of yeast and other bits left floating in the liquid after fermentation. Hine also specifies a smaller cut (meaning more heads in the spirit) but generally tells the distiller to do what they think is best.
I asked the distiller why a premium brand would direct the distillation of a smaller cut, which includes what we think of as more undesirable elements of the heads/tails into the spirit. He said that larger brands do larger cuts because its a 'safer' cut, but also probably results in less interesting brandy.
Aging Cognac at Hine
Forget says, "The philosophy of Hine is to use as little wood as possible," which means they're avoid woody flavors and wood influence. The use fine grain oak, and have their barrels toasted to a low level char.
They say that cognac won't improve in barrel after 50-60 years or so, and they'd transfer it to glass demijohns at that point.
Hine is a cognac that produces a lot of "Early Landed" cognacs, which are not aged in France but in England. By the way, I learned that the amazing grocery/liquor store in Sacramento, Corti Brothers, has a small specialty selection of early landed cognacs.
They also released a unique single-vintage, single-vineyard cognac called Domaines HINE Bonneuil 2005.
Anyway, this visit was my last cognac house for my 2014 trip, and a beautiful way to end it.
In 2014 I visited several cognac houses, and had the pleasure to spend several hours with Benedicte Hardy of Cognac Hardy in their aging and blending facilities.
We got really nerdy with specifics on aging cognac. But first, some background.
Hardy specializes in luxury cognacs, and in general is blended in an "approachable" and "feminine" style. It's a very large operation, with 20,000 barrels aging at their warehouses valued at more than 50 million dollars worth of booze.
It was Benedicte's father who made the company famous in recent years putting the emphasis on luxury. She herself has a law degree and is in charge of the US market, so there may be opportunities to meet with her at events in the States (and I'd highly recommend doing so if the occasion arises- she's a character).
A Cognac Maker, Not A Distiller
Hardy is not a cognac house that grows, ferments, and distills grapes, but they do work with a co-op of 200 growers.
The blender, Michael, buys spirit from Grande Champagne, Petite Champagne, Fin Bois, and Bon Bois. But he doesn't just purchase already-distilled wine, he goes to the distillery/wineries to taste before/after and helps direct the distillation if need be. He said that for example, if a wine is super aromatic he might instruct the distillery to distill on the lees, which will mark the spirit for longer aging.
Regardless, he tastes the new-make spirit after purchase and makes a determination on which product they're destined for – VSOP, XO, etc. He says that 90% of the time the initial determination is correct and they won't have to redirect it off its appointed path later on.
Aging Cognac Versus Other Spirits
Many of the world's spirits, including nearly all scotch whisky, rum, and tequila, age in ex-bourbon casks. The wood has had its influence on the bourbon and vice-versa. So the next time that barrel is used to age rum or whatever, it will not have the same amount of influence on the color and flavor of the next spirit.
In cognac and armagnac, on the other hand, they do not use ex-bourbon casks but new and used French oak barrels. The wood gives a lot of influence when it is first used, and in the case of French oak it brings in lots of tannins along with flavor.
So while bourbon ages only in new barrels for its entire life, cognac is usually aged only for a small amount of time in new barrels then it is transferred into older barrels for the rest of its life so that the wood doesn't take over. (One thing to note that in Cognac, a 'new' barrel means that it has been used for three years or less; it's doesn't necessarily mean brand new.)
In scotch whisky and rum and tequila, since they're using used barrels from the get-go, they don't have to worry so much about the over-oaking so they don't need to move the liquids around unless they feel like it.
Aging at Hardy
So that was a lot of lead-up. Here is how the VSOP is aged at Cognac Hardy.
The brandy is purchased at 70% ABV
It is reduced with water down to 55% and put in Small (220 liter), New barrels. (Note that a typical cognac barrels is 350 liters)
The barrels are divided up – some are put into dry cellars and others are put into humid cellars. The ratio is a house secret.
At 18 months the barrels are moved into Dry cellars
At 24 months, the cognac is reduced to 47% ABV and placed in Humid Cellars
After 5 years, the cognac is reduced to 43% ABV and placed back into Small barrels
After 8 years, the cognac is blended and reduced to 40%
After another 6 months marrying, it is bottled.
Notes About That:
At each barrel transfer stage, the cognac is taken out from individual barrels and put into a big vat before dilution, then redistributed to the next barrels. No wonder cognac is so pricey.
Humid cellars at Hardy have about a 3% annual angels' share, while dry ones have 6%.
For longer-aged XO cognac, they put it into barrels that have been toasted for longer so that these will continue to contribute their toasted effects to it
XO has the same reduction with water scheme as the VSOP, but the toasting is different. (Additionally it is made from brandy that was more distilled on the lees than the younger brandies.)
Chill filtration before bottling is at -7 degrees Celsius for 7 days before running it through the filter
The $64,000 Tasting
We were allowed to taste the highest of the high end Hardy cognacs bottled in Lalique decanters, which retail for $16,000 per bottle. They all come from the same stock of cognacs distilled in the 1920s-1940s, but are blended to bring out different aspects of each.
They are named for each of the four seasons, though currently only the spring (Le Printemps) is on the market. Summer launches in November 2015, and Fall and Winter will follow every 2 years from that.
It's weird and rather awesome to be able to taste a cognac that won't hit the market until 2019.
While in France last year, I had time for a quick unscheduled visit to the house of Deau Cognac.
Deau is located about 40 minutes from the town of Cognac, between the Fin Bois and Petite Champagne. They grow about 30 hectares of grapes, and buy wine from other growers (Fin Bois, Grande Champagne, and Petite Champagne) that they distill on-site.
The distillery itself is quite large, with 12 stills.
I met Véronique Bru Legaret, who along with her son heads up the company. They actually produce three cognac brands: Deau, Moisans, and Roland Bru (named for Véronique's father, who brought the company into the current era).
Previously they sold all their cognac to large brands (I think they no longer do), but now seem to be emphasizing their luxury products. New fancy, sail-shaped bottles have just hit the USA market recently further emphasizing their luxury positioning.
I quickly tasted through most of the Deau line, and here are my nonsensical-as-usual notes:
VS: Tight but good
VSOP: Smells more mature than the VSOP bottling would suggest; sweet cream.
Napoleaon: 7-8 years old. Sweet yellow raisins.
XO: Around 15 years old. Christmas spices including buttery cinnamon with a spicy/minty finish.
Black: Around 10 years old. Sweet and thin, meant for mixing.
Louis Memory: Supple, creamy, like a more mature version of the XO
L.V.O.: Stands for the French translation of "Life in Gold." Made from 1915, 1930, 1950 Grande Champagne cognacs. Banana, raisins, subtle and sandy.
The Merlet family has been distilling in France for 5 generations, but have only launched their own brand of cognac in recent years. They have a really interesting history that I learned on a visit to their chateau, vineyards, and distillery in 2014.
A Brief History of the Cognac Market
Many people from different countries around the world (occupying as well as liberating armies) discovered cognac in World War II. The demand for cognac was very high globally after the war.
In the 1960s based on the brandy's success, the region planted a lot of vines.
In the 1970s there was a big glut in the market, resulting in some economic problems for producers who over-planted and over-extended themselves.
Today those vines planted all those years ago are nearing the end of their lifespan and need to be replanted or maintained.
The Merlet family made wine and distilled cognac for many brands, including Hennessy until 2000. In the 1970s due to the market glut, the Merlet family diversified away from just making cognac into making liqueurs. Today the company's business model reflects both history and that same ingenuity.
Merlet Today
Produces liqueurs including the Creme de Cassis for which they are particularly well-known
Makes their own brand of cognac, and produce an unaged brandy for the European market
Distill brandy for sale to cognac houses
Produce Hypnotiq liqueur
Run the Leblon cachaca distillery in Brazil
Visiting Merlet – The Home and Vineyards
I visited the family home, vineyards, wine production facility, distillery, and aging facility, which are scattered about the area of Saint Sauvant, a little village near Cognac with a 12th century church as its central feature.
The family home is Luc Merlet(my host for the day)'s father's house. It looks out over vineyards (they own 40 hectares) and was the former location of the distillery.
The house was also once the home of Baron Otard, who was a real person as well as the name of a Bacardi-owned cognac brand. That brand home is now located in a tourist attraction/castle/aging warehouse in the heart of the city of Cognac.
I visited the vineyards in the fall, about 10 days before they'd begin harvesting the ugni blanc grapes for distillation. (Ugni blanc is the same grape as Italy's Trebbiano.) These vineyards are in the Borderies delimited region, while the current distillery is in the Fin Bois.
Making Wine for Cognac
We then drove to the winery, where they receive the grapes, crush, and ferment them. Grapes are harvested over the course of just 3 weeks and made into wine, then the wine rests until they have a chance to distill it, which can be months away (by March 31 all distilling for cognac must be completed). The winery was a former co-op winery that they purchased.
Ideal ugni blanc grapes for cognac production are low in sugar/alcohol potential, because distillation will concentrate all the flavors in the grape. The lower the potential alcohol the more times you need to concentrate it to reach the final proof, and thus the more you'll concentrate the flavors getting there. (For example, a 10% ABV wine would be concentrated 4 times to reach 40%, while a 5% wine would be concentrated by 8 times.)
Also, for cognac you cannot add sulfates to the wine to preserve it (as those would be horrible after distillation), so they want high-acid grapes.
Distilling and Tasting
At the distillery, they have 9 stills, including a gargantuan 100 hectoliter still. This huge one can only be used for the first distillation; smaller ones will be used for the second.
Merlet's Brothers' Blend cognac (named for Luc and his brother) is a VSOP aged between 4-12 years and created for mixing in cocktails.
They recently released the first of the Seleccion Saint Sauvant cognac, which is a higher-end bottling.
The flagship of the liqueur line is their Creme de Cassis. Legally creme de cassis must have a minimum of 400 g/l sugar added, but theirs has 500-550 g/l according to Luc Merlet. He says the local blackcurrants (which are the only of the fruits for liqueurs that they grow themselves) require more sugar.
Luc Merlet mentioned a traditional cocktail that is a mix of Cassis and Suze, sometimes with soda added. It has a name that means "panty bottom."
Merlet has also released a couple of liqueurs branded as C2, for Cognac and Cassis and Cognac and Citron. These are meant to be premade aperitifs meant for mixing with ice and soda water.
That was a lot of information gleaned from such a short visit! Thanks for Luc Merlet for hosting.
In 2014 I visited the Bunnahabhain (boo-nuh-ha-bin) distillery on the island of Islay off the western coast of Scotland. Bunnahabhain is the northernmost distillery on Islay (home to whiskies including Laphroaig, Bowmore, and Ardbeg) with the Paps of Jura just across the water. They call Bunnahabhain "the welcoming taste of Islay" because unlike those other scotch whiskies, Bunnahabhain is mostly not smoky and heavy.
Not So Smoky
It wasn't always that way. Until 1963, according to Distillery Manager Andrew Brown, Bunnahabhain made smoky Islay-style whisky. In olden days, they used to malt the barley on-site, but now the old malt hall holds barrel aging facilities.
Now they use unpeated barley (less than 2 ppm phenol) for most of their whisky except special editions. Those take place during only a few weeks during one period of the year. In 2014 the were doing 9 weeks of peated malt distilling, using barley with a phenol level of 35-40 parts per million. Malted barley is delivered to the island and ground on-site.
It is then washed with hot water to wash out (and keep) the fermentable sugars and leave behind the solids. The mash tun holds 50,000 liters.
While most scotch whiskies (at least most that I've visited) wash the barley three times, with the last wash going to the next batch, at Bunnahabhain they wash it four times with the last two washes going to the next batch. Not sure why.
If I got this right, the barley contains 20% fermentable sugars going into the wash, and sugars are washed out (to go to fermentation) at each step:
64 Celsius water brings the sugar content down to 15%
80 Celsius water bring it down to 5%
90 Celsius water for both the second and third washes brings it down to basically zero.
Fermenting and Distilling
The sugary liquid is now ready for fermentation, which is done is one of six wash-backs. The liquid ferments for either 48 hours (on Mondays and Tuesdays so they can distill the fermented beer later in the week) or 110 hours (on Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays, as these will be distilled the next week after the weekend). Brown said this doesn't make a change in the final spirit's flavor after distillation, but they do blend together the spirit made from the two different fermentation times before barreling anyway.
Bunnahabhain is the only distillery on the island to use pure spring water for fermentation. Much of the water for other distilleries starts at one place on Islay and runs over peat bogs on the way down to the distillery, but Bunnahabhain pipes their water 2 miles from the spring so it doesn't run through peat.
The stills here are the tallest on Islay, all packed into a little still room. Two of the stills are quite old, while the other two were added in 1963 along with other equipment when the distillery changed format from Islay-style to unpeated scotch.
When they distill peated whisky during those few weeks of the year, they take different heads and tails cuts on the second distillation as opposed to when they're distilling unpeated whisky.
Water used to bring the newly-distilled whisky down to barrel proof is the same spring water used in distillation but run through a 5 micron particle filter and then a UV light filter.
All of the single-malt whisky made by Bunnahabhain is aged on Islay. They have 21,000 casks aging locally in 6 dunnage and 1 racking warehouses. Whisky for the blends ages on the mainland.
The whisky is bottled on the mainland outside of Glasgow, using the same water that Deanston does (demineralized municipal water).
Bunnahabhain sells about half of the whisky they make to other brands for use in blends. Of the remaining half, 10-20 percent of it is sold as Bunnahabhain single-malt, while the rest goes to their own blends. The parent company Burn Stewart produces Scottish Leader and Black Barrel blends.
Quick Tastes
I visited the distillery during Feis Ile (more on that later), which didn't give a lot of time for quiet contemplation, but here are a few notes on what I tasted.
Bunnahabhain 12 year old: A mix (not a finish) of whisky aged in ex-bourbon and ex-sherry casks. It has a lot of nutty flavors, dried fruits, and a whisp of smoke.
18 year old: Aged in ex-sherry barrels. It is softer yet spicier than the 12 year, and richer due to that sherry influence. My tasting notes, which you should know by now don't make sense to anyone but me, describe it as "rosemary stems and velour tracksuit in dark green."
25 year old: First and second-fill ex-sherry casks. Rich, lovely, wood-soaked and showing the good qualities of age.
Toiteach: From peated barley aged in bourbon and sherry casks. Young canned peaches and ash, a touch of hospital, interesting and well-made.
Helmsman's Dram (a special edition for the festival): Aged 9 years in ex-bourbon then 1 year in a Marsala cask. Seemed Marsala-influenced (old wood tastes), "chicken jerky and chocolate covered salty raisins."
Westering Home (also a festival edition): 10 years in ex-bourbon casks then 6 years in cognac casks then 1 year in Sauternes. To me it tastes like Bunnahabhain with a touch of wine and spice.
It was a great day on Islay and my third visit to the island, yet I can't wait to go back again.
The Deanston distillery is located just a half an hour's drive north of Glasgow, Scotland (and not far from Edinburgh either), near the town of Stirling alongside the River Teith. It's just barely in the Highlands and has that honey-forward flavor I associate with the lower Highland area.
In addition to producing single malt scotch whiskies, Deanston is the "spiritual home" of the Scottish Leader blended scotch brand. The distillery is open to the public for tours.
The River Teith is the source not only of water for distillation, it is the power source of the distillery. River water flows into the distillery and passes through a hydro-electric station. They use only 25% of the power generated to supply the distillery (they say it is the only self-powered distillery in Scotland), and sell the rest of it back to the national power grid.
Previously the water powered a huge water wheel to accomplish the same thing. The distillery was originally built as a cotton mill. Here's a brief overview of the history:
1785 The Deanston Cotton Mill opened. The cotton mill employed and housed a whole town (the houses are still a few hundred yards away), printed their own currency, and offered schools and other services for the workers.
1965 The mill closed.
1967 The mill reopened as a distillery. The weaving shed became the barrel warehouse.
1974 The first Deanston single malt was released
1982 The distillery closed in the bad whisky economy that was about to turn around
1991 The distillery reopened in the good whisky economy from the 1980s
2000 Deanston received certification to produce organic whisky
2008 Deanston begins bottling only non-chill-filtered single-malts
Making Whisky at Deanston
For Deanston's single malts they use all un-peated barley (less than 2ppm phenol), and soft river water that flows over granite (so no peat in there either).
Their malt mill is a Porteus mill, which is so sturdy they've only had to recalibrate it twice since the 1960s. Unfortunately for the company they made their machines so well they went out of business as people didn't tend to need to buy new ones. The mill grinds the malted barley but does not separate out the husks.
They have a rare, huge open-top mash tun that holds 11 tons of barley/water though they do 9-ton mashes. Mashing is where the ground barley is washed with hot water to release sugars and leave behind the solids. As is typical, they wash the grains three times with different temperature waters:
64 Celsius water: Gets the enzymes out of the barley without destroying them, along with some sugars. (These enzymes will help break up the larger sugars so they can be fermented by yeast.) The sugary/enzyme water goes toward fermentation.
78 Celsius water: To remove the majority of the sugars. The sugary water goes toward fermentation.
88 Celsius water: To remove last bits of sugar. The sugary water goes into the next mash (the next batch) rather than into fermentation.
There are 8 washbacks, 60,000 liter steel (not stainless) tanks. Yeast is added to the sugary water for fermentation. Yeast comes in liquid form via tanker. Yeast is combined with the wort (sugar water) at about 19-20 degrees Celsius. During fermentation, the liquid naturally heats up then cools at the lend.
They do a long fermentation- 100 hours- that includes a secondary fermentation to bring in fruity, green-apple notes.
Distillation and Aging
Then it's time for distillation. At Deanston they have 4 stills – 2 wash stills (first distillation) and 2 spirit stills (second distillation).
The first distillation in a 15,000 liter still brings the fermented beer from 8% ABV up to 23-25%. They don't make any heads/tails cuts in the first distillation. The second distillation in a 14,000 liter still takes the spirit up to an average of 68% ABV.
The lyne arm/swan's neck of the still tilts slightly upwards at an angle, which also helps produce a lighter, fruitier style of Highland whisky.
During distillation, they manually adjust the stills to prevent over-foaming – the distiller looks into the windows of the stills and cuts down the temperature if it's foaming all over the place. They boil the spirit at a relatively low temperature to increase reflux/copper contact, which also helps produce a light spirit.
New make spirit goes into barrels at 63.5% ABV. The water used to reduce the spirit to barrel proof is river water that has been treated with a UV filter to ensure nothing grows in it. The barrels, 50,000 or so of them for their single-malts, are stored in the former weaving shed – a unique aging facility in Scotland.
This building has a ceiling (unfortunately difficult to photograph) similar to sherry bodegas with tall cathedral-style arches and central poles that collect water from the roof down through their middles. The high ceilings were to maintain consistent temperature year-round (better for the sewing equipment) and were covered with grass.
There is only a 5-6% temperature change in the warehouse during the year, which gives them less than a 2% evaporation rate (angels' share).
To bring the whiskies down to bottle strength, they use municipal water that has been demineralized on-site using a resin bed filtration system. They do not chill filter their whiskies, but they run them through a paper filter before bottling at room temp.
Deanston Whiskies
12 Year – The flagship product, with tastes of biscuit and ginger spice. All the whiskies have a honey note.
Virgin Oak – No age statement whisky aged in ex-bourbon casks of various ages, then finished in virgin oak casks from Kentucky for 9-12 weeks. My host and brand ambassador for the Burn Stewart Distillers whiskies, Dr. Kirstie McCallum, calls the Virgin Oak a "summer whisky."
Spanish Oak – Aged 10 years in ex-bourbon casks then 9 years in ex-Spanish brandy barrels, with dried fruits and nutty sherry notes.
Sherry Cask – I think this was a limited edition, aged for 10 years in ex-Oloroso sherry barrels
1974 – Aged 37 years in ex-Oloroso sherry casks, yet it still comes in at 50.3% ABV (showing their super low angels' share). It has rancio, ashy, high vinegar notes of super old sherry.
My trip was hosted by the parent company, Burn Stewart Distillers, who also own Bunnahabhain, Tobermory, Ledaig, Scottish Leader, and Black Bottle. I also visited Bunnahabhain and will write about that more in another post.
By the way, Deanston was my 100th distillery visit!
Lost Spirits Distillery in Monterey County, California, is a kooky little place, resembling more a back yard miniature golf course than a typical distillery. Most of the equipment is outdoors, including the pot still that's shaped like a dragon, miniature grain-smoking pagoda, and the above-ground pool that serves as the cooling water for the condenser.
The distillery is run by Bryan Davis and Joanne Haruta. You may remember them from several years back when they ran a distillery in Spain that produced Obsello absinthe and Port of Barcelona gin. Davis is a former art teacher and zoo exhibit designer but he has picked up more than a little bit of chemistry as we'll soon see.
So, that dragon-shaped pot still: It's powered by an old apartment building steam boiler for heat. The body of the still (300 gallons) looks like a big barbecue grill but it's made out of roofing copper. The shape was built in a way to minimize removing flavors, rather than rectifying much like tall round pot stills. Davis says, "We engineer the fermentation so much that we want to capture more of the flavor in distillation."
The dragon tail is the lynne arm, which dips into a horizontal condenser. The water for the condenser comes from the bottom of a swimming pool, which heats up over the day of distilling, sometimes reaching 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
With their old still, which was built out of wood, they would hop in the warm pool at the end of the day and use it as a hot tub. But chlorine and wood doesn't mix – the still actually got corked and they had to replace it. (For those of you barrel-aging cocktails, never rinse your barrels with chlorinated tap water for this reason.)
Davis would like you to know that the pool water does not actually go into the whiskey; it stays in the pipes for cooling purposes only.
The dragon's head is a steam release, so while distilling steam shoots out its mouth.
Making Rum at Lost Spirits
At this distillery they make whiskey and rum. The whiskey I wrote about for Whisky Advocate and I'll try to publish some more info here when the story comes out.
We watched an incredibly scientific Powerpoint presentation about the rum called, "Engineering Rum: The Fruit Nature Forgot to Make." I'll cover what I think I learned from it.
There will probably be some mistakes in the below text, so please don't take it as gospel but as starter info for further exploration.
The goal, in part, as Lost Spirits, is to make high-ester rum
A given rum may have up to 300 unique esters
Simple phenol smell is that familiar Band-Aid smell, but phenols as a group are a category
To make a high-ester rum, you need to make acids
Phenolic acids come from when we burn things. (In scotch whisky we're always talking about the phenol content of smoky whiskies.)
Lignin in sugar cane contains phenols you release by heating
For their rum, they want to start with a molasses that has high phenolics; has low anisoles (anise flavors); and is free of sulfur compounds. They use Grade-A molasses particularly for the latter reason.
Dunder
Rum nerds have heard about dunder pits- pits of decaying vegetation (and sometimes things like a rotting goat head) in wood-lined pits, found in old distilleries particularly on Jamaica.
These pits acts as a bacteria starter. To these pits distillers in the olden days added stillage from distillation (the leftover stuff from distilling).
Then the dunder pit contents would be added to fermenting molasses to increase the esters in the rum distilled from it.
At Lost Spirits, they imitate the dunder pit process in a more… clean way. They mash up bananas and add lab-controlled bacteria to it. Then they add this to the fermenting molasses.
In the process of fermentation, there is a battle of yeast versus bacteria. The byproduct of yeast's battle against bacteria is acetic acid and trace carboxylic acid. Yeast under stress bind acids to alcohol and make esters. They accomplish this stress by adding dunder to yeast.
As the goal is to get funky, stanky (high-esther, high-acid) rum out of the still, their still is a low-rectification model (short and squat). This will allow more of these compounds to pass over in distillation.
Aging Rum at Lost Spirits
One flavor they want to get out of their rum is a honey flavor, which is phenol-ethyl acetate. This comes from ethyl acetate (ester) plus phenol. And the ethyl acetate comes from from acetic acid (that comes from wood, yeast, and bacteria), wood as a catalyst, and ethanol.
Got that? Yeah me neither but sorta.
To age their rum they use new American oak barrels, smoked and charred to release lots more esters. These barrels are then seasoned with sherry.
Another flavor they want to crank up in their rum in rancio, a flavor found in old cognac and other spirits but that usually doesn't turn up until about 30 years of aging. However, Davis notes that it shows up earlier in solera-aged spirits, which are aged in super old barrels.
Rancio comes from lignin (from long-aged wood barrels) decomposing in liquid. So they have figured out a way to copy this process and are patenting it. So all I know is what they're doing; not how.
Rums Coming Out of the Distillery
Rums coming out of the distillery come in small batches and include Navy-style rum, Cuban-style rum, Colonial American-style rum, and Polynesian-style rum. I'm not sure what the difference is between the various styles, but they're all high-proof.
I believe that the navy-style rum is the easiest to find. Some of it comes in at a whopping 68% and retails for about $45, which is an absurd bargain.
