There’s a big tenth anniversary happening tomorrow the likes of which cannot be ignored.  It’s an event that will be of historical interest to most people who find themselves on this page, yet it’s one which most people get by in their day to day lives not really thinking about.

Of course I am talking about Bruichladdich bottling their first ten year old since re-openning their gates back in 2001.

The resurrection of the Laddie is a fantastic tale of hard work, perseverance, determination, blood, sweat and tears and can be recounted in the brilliant book by Stuart Rivans, Whisky Dream: Waking a Giant. A must read for any fans of Scotch Whisky.

It is not this story I would like to tell today, because as I mentioned, it has already been told quite superbly.  It is one I may revisit in future posts though.  What I would like to share on the eve of the Bruichladdich 10, is the story of exactly what goes into a bottle of whisky… a story we all (including myself up until last week) think that we appreciate.

I have just come back from a week of working on Islay.  A Whisky Adventure like no other.  I was invited out to work at Bruichladdich for 4 days, with a day off in the middle to work at Ardbeg.  A privilege it was impossible to turn down and one which made me appreciate even more the effort which goes into a bottle of our favourite tipple.

Here’s what we know from various distillery tours:

To call a whisky a Single Malt Scotch Whisky it must,

1. Be made from malted barley, water and yeast and be fermented with natural enzymes from the barley, no sugar can be added to the mixture
2. It must be distilled in copper pot stills
3. It must be distilled in Scotland
4. It must be matured in Scotland, in oak for a minimum 3 years
5. It must be a minimum 40%abv 
6. It must be the product of one distillery

You Malt It:

Barley is brought into a maltings where it is dressed, steeped, germinated and kilned to a distillery’s specifications before being transported to the distillery.  We tend to forget the farmers who have to grow the barley to a specific standard, and then sell it to the industry.  (Bruichladdich have actually convinced Islay farmers to grow barley on the island for them, this accounts for upwards of 40% of their yield per annum, and has led to a change in rural landscape on Islay.)

You Mill It:

The mashman then mills the barley to a specific grind to ensure he gets the most out of his crop.

You Mash It:

This grist is then mixed with water at a very specific strike temperature (generally 63.5C) to kick-start starch conversion into soluble sugars.

You Ferment It:

The Worts (Useless Information Alert!: short for worthy liquids) are then drained off through an underback, cooled and fed into a washback ready for the addition of yeast to start fermentation.  The final waters are recycled and used in the next batch.  We miss the use of the excess heat from the cooling process being reused to heat the waters for the next batches.  Bowmore even use this heat, as well as heat from other parts of the process for kilning!

You Distil It:

After a few days fermentation, our yeast is spent.  The high alcohol beer (7-10%abv) is then ready for distillation.  Distillation happens at least twice at Scottish malt whisky distilleries and is used to concentrate the alcohol level to upwards of 70%abv.  We don’t get told that the stillman knows which dials are wrong, and which stills generally misbehave.  We also never see the fact that a hot still is emptied as a second one is filled, this ensures that the wash is heated and takes less energy to boil. Engineering ingenuity at its best!



You Mature It:

This spirit is then pumped to the warehouse to be filled, and now the hard work takes on a whole new level!


Most of us are well aware that the Scotch Whisky Industry uses second hand casks for most of its production.  This was traditionally a money saving technique, but is also seen as vital to achieving a certain balance in our whiskies.  I like to think of casks like teabags, every cup of tea made with a single teabag becomes gradually weaker in strength of flavour and colour, the same goes for casks.  Every refill gives less to the whisky.  Casks therefore are the most important component in whisky as we know it today.  We need to use one for at least 3 years to even label our spirit Scotch!

The question is, how much do you know about our oak?

3 years ago I was invited to Jerez in Spain to learn all about oak, and even got the chance to build a sherry butt with a team of my Whisky peers.  This was an eye opening and humbling experience, and still did not cover the whole story!

An oak cask starts it’s life centuries before we even put whisky into it as an acorn.  It then grows straight and true in the forests of Europe, America and Japan before being felled to be honourably coopered into  vessel for holding whisk(e)y.

1. The cask I helped to make had been felled in the north of Spain.  
2. Here it was cut into staves (you get a maximum 2 sherry butts from an oak tree in Spain).  
3. These staves were then shipped to Jerez in the south 
4. They were laid to dry in the Spanish sun for 4 years
5. Then they were coopered into 500 litre sherry butts by 2 Spanish coopers or 6 random whisky geeks

p.s. didn’t mention chill filtration or spirit caramel, because Bruichladdich don’t use those techniques…


In my glass: Bruichladdich Sherry Classic