Tag: distillery visit

Four Roses Bourbon Distillery Visit

This week I was in Kentucky for a quick visit to the Four Roses distillery. For some history on this brand, see this post a I wrote a few years ago. In short, Four Roses was only a bourbon in Japan for many years, and has recently come back to the US market. They use two mashbills (grain makeup) and five strains of yeast to make ten recipes of bourbon.

The ten recipes blended together ensure a consistent bourbon from batch to batch. Another way they help do this is by having single-story rickhouses. While other brands have several floors in their rickhouses with quite extreme temperature variations in them, at Four Roses they're only one floor high, six barrels tall, with a much less variation in temperature from top to bottom.

We did two tastings at the distillery. One was tasting all ten recipes of the white dog. They have quite the wide range of flavor, from fruity to spicy. The second was tasting several barrels all with the same recipe from different barrels. This was fascinating as there was a surprisingly large difference: one tasted like oloroso sherry, one like apricot socks, one like creamed corn.

Largely because they've been selling mostly in Japan, they use all non-GMO corn. Distillery Jim Rutledge says they don't really advertise that because he doesn't expect they'll be able to get enough non-GMO corn to continue doing so: everything is being replaced by the modified stuff.

Well I have to run to another event- more on this interesting brand another time.

December 8, 2010
The Dalmore Distillery Visit- A Single Malt Scotch Whisky Distillery Tour

Last week I visited the Isle of Jura, The Dalmore, and Fettercairn distilleries in Scotland. These brands are all owned by White & Mackay. This post is about visiting The Dalmore distillery.

(The Dalmore distillery indicated by red dot. Map from Google Maps.)

From Jura, we took a boat to the mainland and then drove diagonally northeast to reach The Dalmore. It was a long and gorgeous drive into the Highlands that took the better part of a day.

(The Dalmore distillery)

There are many things that make up the final flavor profile of a single-malt scotch, including the variety of barley, the peating levels of it, the water used in the mashing and fermentation, the size and shape of the stills, the size and type of barrels used to age it, where the barrels are aged, and of course the length of aging of the whisky.

The water for The Dalmore comes from Loch Morie, and inland lake. The water then runs through a river to the distillery that is located on another body of water, the Cromarty Firth. As the water travels through a whole lot of peat on the way, by the time it reaches the distillery it is brown in color. This water, not filtered, is used in the mashing and fermentation, and to dilute the whisky to barrel proof for aging.

You can see how it might add to the flavor of the whisky.

(Peat-filled brown water flowing into The Dalmore distillery.)

In the previous post I talked about Jura's tall stills that produce a light and fruity spirit full of high esther notes like pear. At The Dalmore the stills are quite differently shaped and this impacts the spirit.

Photography wasn't allowed in the still room so you'll have to make due with my artistic renderings below.

The stills for the first distillation almost look decapitated- they just stop with a flat top and the lynne arm is not a gentle curve from the top, but a tube sticking out from a foot or two below it.

(Artistic rendering of stills at The Dalmore. Not to scale.)

The still for the second distillation isn't quite as ugly, but it's even more interesting. I think this is the first time I've seen a water-filled reflux section on a still in Scotland. On the tubular pipe near the top of the still is a section that is rinsed with cool water inside.

This makes it difficult for light elements to reach the top of the still, leaving the more robust heavy molecules to cross over to the condenser. You get a spirit that's a lot less light and esthery, very much unlike Jura we'd visited the day before.

Thus The Dalmore comes off the still as a big bold heavy liquid before it goes into wood. It is then the job of the Master Blender, Richard Patterson in this case, to tame the spirit as it ages and shape it into the final product.

I thought that the role of the Master Blender was simply to take what was given to him- a bunch of scotch in barrels- and mix it together, but it is much more than that, at least at The Dalmore.

Patterson chooses the types of barrels (going to Jerez to pick out the sherry ones personally) in which the spirit will be aged, decides on the flavor profile he's seeking for a particular bottling, manages the aging process and checks up on the spirit to see how it is doing as it develops, and puts the blends together. It is product development, wood management, and blending.

Keep in mind that this is still just for a single-malt scotch whisky, a blend of whiskies from the same distillery. A vatted malt or a blend would involve whiskies from other distilleries and grain (column distilled) whisky also. Patterson does this for the Whyte & Mackay blended scotch whisky that is not available in the US.

On this trip I learned a great deal about the different roles of the master distiller and the master blender, and how some spirits need gentle nudging as they age to get them to the right final flavor profile, and others need an aggressive and more hands-on approach to bring them into line. Funny enough, the lighter, softer spirit is made on an island and the full-bodied bruiser comes from the Highlands.

June 16, 2010
A Visit to Bowmore on Islay in Scotland

Hello from Islay! I'm in Scotland on a trip with Bowmore.

After a first night of bar exploration and jetlag adaptation in Glasgow, I was ready for the press trip to begin. I spent the morning blogging about the previous night, then had a day to explore Glasgow. I can't say I learned a ton about the city, except that I love the look of Glasgow University and had a great time exploring the Kelvingrove museum.

By the next morning I'd met up with the rest of the group and we flew together to Islay. To get there by car/bus and ferry apparently takes almost nine hours, but the flight was just 45 minutes from the Glasgow airport.

Over the course of the day, the weather changed from the Islay/Scotland weather you see all the time- mildly raining with low visibility- to sunny and bright in the later afternoon/early evening. Islay always looked to me like it is built for dreary weather, with all white buildings as the one color that looks good in the fog, but when it's sunny it takes on a happy little seaside town feel.

I should mention that we're in the town of Bowmore, the capital city of Islay, but are driving to various spots on the island to sample other restaurants and attractions.

But first, the distillery tour. As you probably know, Islay single malt scotch whiskies are known for a smoky/peaty flavor profile, often with seaside flavors like seaweed and salt. Bowmore has less of the seaweed/iodine flavors so present in Laphroaig, but to my palate is still dominated by a smoky charred flavor with a lurking sherry cask flavor present in different amounts depending on the bottling's expression. I didn't realize that there is actually a lot less phenol content- the amount of smokiness/peatedness in scotch- than other brands. Bowmore comes in at about 25 parts per million, whereas I believe Laphroaig comes in at 40 and Ardbeg at 60.

At Bowmore, like at Laphroaig and The Balvenie, they malt some of their own barley. This involves purchasing barley, soaking it in three cycles over a 24 hour period, spreading it out on a malting floor, and turning the malt over again and again until the grain germinates and sends out a little shoot about one-quarter the length of the grain.

Germination is then stopped by drying the barley with a combination of hot air and peat smoke to the desired level of smokiness. I actually got to harvest peat from a bog, turn and rake some barley, and even step into the kiln after it had recently stopped blowing the peated air through it.

At this point the malted barley is ready to be fermented and distilled. Allowing the grain to germinate starts an enzymatic process that will convert starches in the grain to sugars when hot water is added again. The malted barley is ground to separate the floury innards from the husk, then this is washed with hot water in three cycles to release the sugar.

The grain is then discarded (sold to farmers as cattle feed) and the sugar water is fermented and then distilled. The new make spirit is then aged in ex-bourbon and/or ex-sherry casks for the different expressions. We took a look into Vault No. 1, where the barrels of Bowmore Gold were housed, some beneath sea level adjacent to the salt-crusted warehouse sea wall.

More posts from Bowmore to follow!

April 27, 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
A Visit to Courvoisier Cognac

On a recent trip to France, I stopped in to Courvoisier cognac for a visit. Courvoisier is located not in the city of Cognac, but in Jarnac- one of the two other main cognac towns along with Segonzac. Jarnac appears to be a bigger city than Cognac and looks a bit more lively. I popped in to the tourism office and was told they don't really have any hotels in the city itself, just bed and breakfasts. The real hotels are the fancy chateaus a few miles outside the city.

Courvoisier dominates the Charente river waterfront here as Hennessy does in Cognac. Can you believe this picture isn't a postcard?

The house of Courvoisier is just as beautiful inside as it appears on the outside, though they have a bit of Napoleon overdose in the design theme. Courvoisier was the official supplier of cognac to Napoleon or some such, and they really are running with that. In the visitor's center downstairs, they even have one of his famous hats. (Branding suggestion to Courvoisier: make the Napoleon hat the bartender's new fedora.)

Courvoisier only purchases grapes for its cognac from the inner four delimited cognac regions- Grande Champagne, Petite Champagne, Borderies, and Fine Bois. They own two distilleries but work with several others to produce the eau de vie that will go into their bottles.

A unique thing about Courvoisier is that they pick out the trees that are used to make their barrels, then have them built especially for their use. (Most companies just buy barrels.) They use the traditional Limousin and Troncais forest trees, along with some from Jupille.

While there, we were treated to the La Nez de Courvoisier experience. Basically they take you into a groovy lounge, blindfold you, and blow smells in your face. You have a glass of cognac in front of you and the goal is to try to identify those same aromas in the cognac. They're bringing the La Nez de Courvoisier on the road in the US, but by the time you read this post they will all have happened.

October 7, 2009