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A #Sherry monster… #Whisky
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A Bodega’s Trash is a Distillery’s Treasure (Quercus Robur)
For whisk(e)y to legally be called whisk(e)y in the UK, it has to spend a minimum of 3 years and a day in an oak cask within the country of production. In our first post in the All About Oak series we looked at how this ageing came about and explores the relatively late introduction of this law to the UK.Now we ask the question, why oak?This is an extremely easy question to answer. It is a question that was described so succinctly in a presentation by John Glaser of Compass Box fame that I feel I cannot improve on it. We use oak for three main reasons:1) it is an extremely strong wood
2) it is pure in that it contains no resin canals unlike rubber for example
3) it delivers flavours that are pleasing to the human palateAdd to this the chemicals it naturally releases into our spirits and it’s watertight yet porous nature and there is no argument that it is the perfect wood for maturation.Historically though, it would have been used because it was abundant and inexpensive second hand. The wine producers would have known about the virtues of oak, but the Whisky industry only cared about the reliability and the cost, something that has changed over time, and something they began to realise quickly, and nowadays spend very close attention to.
Remember that wines were shipped in cask, and the greengrocers of the late 19th an early 20th century were bottling this wine, particularly the fortified wines from Europe. A typical Whisky list of the time would have included whiskies from port pipes, claret casks, burgundy barriques and perhaps most importantly, sherry butts.The sherry butt delivers what most of us Scots would describe as a stereotypical Whisky. The Whisky our grandparents smell of. Big, rich and sweet. Drams for in front of the log fire. The distillers and blenders knew this and decided that these were the flavours they wanted. Simply put, they were maturing Whisky in sherry casks to try and win over the brandy market.And it worked! Today the French drink more Scotch Whisky in a month, than Cognac in a year. We must have been doing something right. However the origins of these sherry casks might surprise a few of you.And so we come to Quercus Robur. Here’s the story I picked up from my coopering expedition to Jerez in 2008.
When fermenting and ageing sherry, the Spanish hate Spanish Oak. It’s thick, tannic nature sees their wine become astringent and woody very quickly. It lacks balance and delicacy. Therefore, to age and ferment sherry they like to use American oak. They will either use Quercus Petrea from Europe or Quercus Alba from the states. (We’ll cover these in later posts).Therefore, simply saying that we buy second hand sherry casks from Spain is a bit wide if the mark, and here at Whisky Adventures I like to deliver as much of the story as I can.If we bought second hand sherry casks from bodegas in Spain, we would end up with vessels that are watertight but are also around 100 years old. This is due to the Solera aging system employed by the sherry industry. These would be exhausted and useless for Whisky. Traditionally we bought second hand casks, but we bought them from the greengrocers in the UK. And that is an important distinction.The casks sent to greengrocers were not made from Quercus Alba or Quercus Petrea, these woods were far too valuable for shipping purposes. The casks used to ship sherry were manufactured using the abundant and very tannic Spanish Oak, Quercus Robur.These Spanish Oak casks were watertight and coopered to the highest quality, yet they did not deliver great sherry so were relegated to shipping vessels.On the journey up to the UK, the astringent tannins were leeched out into the wine (which would be blended in the UK to deliver a creaminess anyway) therefore seasoning and mellowing the oak. This meant that when our Whisky was introduced, the oak was less active and delivered a rich, full bodied Whisky with the distillery character still recognisable.An accidental discovery which some distilleries still insist on today. To give you an idea of exactly how important this oak is to these distilleries, we need only look at one of the most expensive wood policies in our industry: that of the Edrington Group.
Producing The Macallan, Highland Park and Glenrothes today is impossible without good European Oak sherry casks. However, sherry is no longer shipped to the UK in cask making these European Oak vessels very hard to come by. If you want a European oak sherry butt in the Whisky industry, you can forget that term second hand unless you want poor quality, exhausted oak. To get a European oak cask from Spain you must follow a complicated and expensive process:
First you must strike up a deal with saw mill in the north of Spain where the Quercus Robur grows. Staves will be cut from sustainable forests and shipped to Jerez de la Frontera in the south.
Secondly you must leave your staves to dry for 4 years in the Spanish sun. This will remove some of the tannin in the wood and also reduce the possibility of the casks shrinking if dry.
Thirdly two Spanish coopers will fashion your staves into 500 litre sherry butts, tested for watertightness and pressure.
Fourthly fill your casks with Oloroso sherry, the older the better and leave to season for a minimum of 2 years.
Finally empty the rented sherry back into a Solera system and ship 500 litres of Spanish fresh air up to Scotland to fill with your new make spirit.
Each of these vessels is a 6 year and £900 investment. But they do deliver some incredible whiskies.
Cheers,
Craig
In the next few posts we will look at sherry and the importance of tannic wood in certain circumstances.
In my glass: Harvey’s Rich Old Oloroso, just doing my bit for the sherry industry! -
Definitions: Cask Sizes
In the last post we looked at how the Scotch Whisky Industry formed without oak and how this style was available legally as Whisky until as late as 1915. Now we are going to delve into the depths of maturation, focussing on the cask’s previous contents (this will give you a new outlook on where the flavours come from) as well as the different types of oak and even different cask sizes and their effects. Not to mention the unquestionable skill and craftsmanship of the cooper.I’d like to draw on all of my experiences over the last 8 years and finally give an explanation of what is happening in a cask as far as we can tell at the moment. It’s a complicated business, one that most people pay lip service to, but one that is brushed over despite it’s vital importance, especially when you realise that without it we would not have Whisky as it exists today. Hold on to your hats, and jump into casks!The first topics I’d like to tackle are the different cask sizes, where they come from and the effect of maturation on each, regardless of the previous contents that were seasoning the casks. Scotch Whisky must mature in Oak in Scotland for a minimum of 3 years and a day, and it must be matured in a cask no greater than 700 litres in size to ensure sufficient wood contact.
Cask Sizes in use today:Gorda 700 litres: A cask used for marrying American whiskies, legally the largest capacity cask we can use for maturationMadeira Drum 650 litres: Very uncommon in the Scotch Industry but used from time to time, mainly for aceing and finishing.Sherry Butt 500 litres: A cask traditionally used for maturing and fermenting SherryPort Pipe 500 litres: A cask traditionally used for ageing Port, taller and thinner than a ButtPuncheon 500 litres: A cask constructed from spare staves, shorter and fatter than a buttHogshead 250 litres: A cask size introduced to make warehouse mathematics easierFrench barrique 225 litres: A cask used for maturing wineQuarter Cask 80 litres: A small cask recently re-introduced into the industry to age whisky ‘quicker’Bloodtub 50 litres: A tiny cask rarely used these days used(All cask sizes are approximate. Remember that these are hand crafted vessels and can vary from cooperage to cooperage. This is why all casks are weighed before and after filling to ensure exact content knowledge)The first casks used in Scotland would have undoubtedly been small. Bloodtubs and Quarter Casks would have been kept in the cellars of the wealthy and filled with the local Whisky. These casks would be tapped half way up and refilled with new spirit (legally Whisky at the time remember) in a crude solera ageing system. The rich would have been amongst the first to experience the effect of oak on spirit and would have been extremely proud of the unique product ageing in each of their cellars. This was not done on a grand scale though, as people filled only what they could afford and cooperage was expensive.The first cask sizes used on any great scale, would have been standards in the European wine industry. The first people to have wood policies as such in Scotland would have been the blenders. Distilleries would have been storing Whisky before the first blends in the 1850s, but even these products were stored to be sold at the greengrocers. These are the greengrocers who would eventually go on to become the blenders. A perfect circle and a fact that allows us insight into how the industry at the time was shaping up and exactly where the roots of today’s business were planted. These gentlemen were extremely important, many of them went on to become barons and landowners due to their entrepreneurship and innovation!
Sherry Butt in construction They learned the art of blending from the tea trade, and were in an extremely privileged position when it came to ageing Whisky, as they were also the bottler’s of the time. This meant they imported casks of French wine, ports, Madeiras and Sherries which they blended and bottled themselves. It was only natural then that they sold these empty casks to the whisky industry for storing Whisky that they would then buy back.So the first casks used on an industrial scale would have been Sherry butts, Port Pipes and French barriques. When the law changed in 1915 outlawing unaged whiskies, the distilleries jumped at the chance of buying second hand casks from the blenders and greengrocers probably without realising the importance or indeed the legacy laid down which still emanates through the Industry today.French barriques however threw up an unusual problem. One which continued as we went on to source barrels fron the Bourbon Industry in the USA. The warehousemen of the late 19th and early 20th century were not the most literate of workforces and the guagers were rarely sober. To switch between 180 or 195 litre casks and 500 litre casks was not the easiest mathematical task in the world for either profession. Something had to be done.
French Barriques being disgorged at Bruichladdich This was the reason that the industry introduced a Hogshead (a traditional 15th century measurement) into the mix. It simply made the mathematics of the day easier. Coopers would bring in three or four barriques or barrels and build two 250 litre hogsheads to make stock-take easier.Today the most common size of cask in the Whisky industry is undoubtedly the American Standard Barrel. These can only be used once by law to mature Bourbon and therefore offer an extremely cheap source of oak for our industry.
American Standard Barrel Today distilleries are rarely building hogsheads, (a process making even more sense when casks were shipped in flat pack form) as it is now cheaper to ship casks whole. Factor in that the smaller a cask, the larger the percentage of the Whisky inside is in contact with the wood at any giving time, therefore the quicker the Whisky picks up the characteristics from the oak as well a the introduction of computers into the stock system and it makes perfect sense to use American standard barrels.The final thing I should point out about casks is their finite lifespan. Casks contain lot of compounds and goodness that we look for in our Whisky (more on the specifics later) however they will lose these benefits as they get older and the Whisky leeches them out.
I like to think of a cask like a teabag. If I made myself a cup of tea and then you used the same teabag for your cup of tea, yours would be lighter in colour and less pungent in taste and aroma unless you left the teabag in longer. Casks work the same. Each fill will remove more from the wood eventually rendering it exhausted. Subsequent fills will require longer and longer periods to gain significant flavours and most refills will never match up to the colour or aroma of a previous incumbent. The life of a cask looks like this:
A trail of tannins from European Oak stacks Virgin oak is filled with Sherry/Bourbon/Wine for 1-8 years. These products remove lots of colour and woody aromas from the cask.These casks are then filled with Scotch. What we now call a first fill cask. The Scotch removes more aromas and flavours during it’s life in here. Around 12 years.The cask then becomes a refill where we put another batch of Scotch in. This batch will be lighter and less woody in flavour but can stay in the cask much longer if need be. Up to 40 or 50 years in special cases.If the wood still has more to give a third fill may take place, but this is less common these days.The cask can then become a marrying tun for resting blends and marriages of single malts, or if no longer watertight we can make garden furniture or woodchips out of the casks.Some companies today still use casks up to 6 or 8 times. However, gladly the industry is realising that after 3 fill maximum a cask will have very little left to give and we are seeing more and more Whisky makers refuse to use casks more than three times. These casks will still be in our industry for over 60 years, Oak really is the most important part of our final product and the more us drinkers know about it the better our Whisky Adventures will become.Next time we will focus on types of oak and their special properties.
Cheers,
Craig
In my glass: PC9 a perfect marriage of different wine casked whiskies from Bruichladdich to give a superbly married and well balanced peaty monster. -
London Adventure Day 1: Two Brand Ambassadors, a Mixologist, a Sommelier and a Whisky Expert Walk into a Bar…
Hi all,
It’s Monday October 17th and I find myself in London.
I LOVE London. A city that boasts Victorian superiority, built on an Empire surviving on cosmopolitan values and an extremely fast pace of life. It also has some of the best bars in the world and a cocktail culture that is years ahead of everyone else.
So come with me on a Whisky Adventure in real-time as I hopefully remember to update this post!
Yesterday evening was so much fun. I came to realise that real time updates were not possible due to my iPhone’s terrible battery life, so I’ve decided to recall everything the morning after. Anything I’ve forgotten probably needed forgotten, and definitely didn’t need published…
I was whisked from my hotel just across from St. Pancras at around 6pm by a couple of fellow Adventurers as we made plans to see the sights.
Patsy Christie is one of Mixxit UK’s mixologists, travelling up and down the country teaching people how to make brilliant libations (The Laphroaig Sour recipe was from Patsy’s masterful mixing mind.) John Clay is the brand ambassador for Bols, covering their entire liqueur range as well as Bols Genever. There was no chance of this evening being boring!
Their initial thoughts were to hit all of the upscale world class cocktail establishments, however, without any prior warning of this, coupled with the strict dress code these places enforce, there was no chance I was getting in dressed LIKE THAT! (Was how Patsy put it…)
Therefore we headed for the tube as our Adventure became more and more sporadic. Just the way I like it!
Hopping off at Leicester Square we took a quick walk past Trafalgar Square and Nelson’s Column, (turns out Nelson Mandela was in the navy, who would have thunk it?) and down towards Embankment where I fell in love…
…with a bar.
Gordon’s Wine Bar is the oldest Wine Bar in the city and occupies the basement of an old shop. Toilets on the ground floor, and a staircase leading down to what can only be described as a magical portal into Spain. The old vaulted ceiling of the basement hangs low over the sporadically scattered table and wine barriques acting as tables. Candles light the room and a huge buffet fills up one corner. Then just sitting like part of the furniture, is the bar itself.
With one of the best wine lists in the city, it’s no surprise that Gordon’s is packed on a Monday night. But I had come for something better.Gordon’s was started in 1890 on Villiers Street. It was owned by the Gordon family, famous sherry importers, and still to this day they sell blended sherry from their own barrels! How close this blending process is to the way it was done in the 19th century we’ll never know, but I love the fact that there is a bar in the UK that has three different sherries on tap described simply as dry, medium and sweet or Fino, Amontillado and Oloroso. I said back in 2008 when I was in Jerez, that sherry would have it’s day again, and it looks like it’s finally happening. If the uncool fortified wine can fill a bar on a Monday night in London, then it’s only a matter of time before the rest of the world catch on!
We tried each of the casked sherries, the Amontillado the favourite with it’s lovely nutty finish, then decided we had better get something to eat.It turns out that something to eat in present company meant something fruity, it meant a Bloody Mary.We headed from the oldest wine bar in London to the oldest continuously running restaurant in London: Rules. This place had charm. A doorman stood outside in a fantastic hat and tails, the red leather seats looked so comfortable through the window. This looked like a place where a man could get a good steak. It also looked like the kind of place that can mix up a great Martini.
We headed up the long carpeted staircase to the upper levels. Our Adventuring crew must have liked where we were headed, as our ranks swelled by three. Step up Bryant Mao the sommelier at Chez Bruce an extremely high end Michelin star restaurant in Wandsworth Common, enter Jonathon Thompson Master of Malt’s IT guy and Ron Jeremy’s chaperone and last but not least, welcome to Rebecca Asseline, the brand ambassador for Courvoisier in the UK.
Two Brand Ambassadors, a mixologist, a sommelier and a whisky expert walk into a bar……here’s what happened:With our new found crew we sat at the wood, and let Brian Silva work his magic. This is one of the best mixologists on the planet. All 5 of us were in awe at his creations and we fell in love with his charm, his attention to detail and incredible sense of humour. Here are a few creations we sipped upon, every one of them one of Brian’s Originals:First off I asked for something with Scotch Whisky (I’m so predictable) with a bit of smoke. Brian served up this:
A libation called the Islay Maiden involving the following ingredients:
and a spray of Jura 5 year old spirit to bring it together. Wonderful.While I was enjoying the Maiden, Patsy was supping on an incredible Bloody Mary, John had something Genever based, Rebecca had something with princess dust in it, a bramble infused Manhattan was doing the rounds, a Naughty Mac had been served up (a twist in a whisky mac with King’s Ginger and Naked Grouse) and Jonathon had asked for an Irish Whisky based drink (predictability again). The Irish Whisky was served from a 1960’s Jameson bottle that Brian keeps topped up.
The star of the show though, was Bryant’s Postmodern Whisky Sour. Fun, colourful and most importantly extremely tasty! Balanced perfectly, this was a great drink involving the bartenders greatest adversary, Midouri!Brian managed to bring us all into his world at Rules and break every single convention we thought that the bartending world had. He entertained us, kept us topped up, listened to our stories, shared his own and most importantly taught us that the only thing you need to decide about the contents of any glass is whether you like it or not. A man after my own heart!Here are some snaps of the incredible journeys our palates took at Rules:
With such an incredible Mixologist in front of us, I couldn’t help but ask him about his take on the industry and how things seem to be heading. My first question was about managing his back bar. How does a man with such a great reputation decide what goes on his back bar? His answer was simple and profound: “Whatever doesn’t get used, doesn’t stay.” If he can work with it, then he will.After seeing Brian chip and carve the ice for our drinks by hand we asked about the new fashion regarding ice balls and ice diamonds. He said he loves it if it helps the drink. Diamonds are too time consuming, ice balls are fun, he likes big random-shaped blocks as they keep his drinks chilled for longer, and he doesn’t need to faff about with them.After the grilling and the need for real actual food, we said goodbye to Brian, but not before taking a tour of his bar. Rules has lamps from the original Playboy Club in London, as well as a mural saved from the Savoy and completed around the room by the owner of Rules. Ending at a secret door with a wonderful painting of the end of the hunt:
This picture doesn’t do it justice. But we learn that the Hunter got his prey, while the fox got away. Magical!After Rules we headed up Tavistock Street to a tavern called Opera. John and Jonathon left us at this point, and my iPhone died, so no photos I’m afraid. What I will say though, is that the Fois Grais burger was to die for! After some bites and wine we called it a night and jumped in a black cab, ready for the happy ride back to the hotel.Stay tuned for day 2!Cheers,Craig
Here you will find all interesting things I come across in the world of Scotch Whisky as I travel and spread the wit and wisdom over a dram or two...
