Speyside Life - Single Malt and Swedish Heavy Metal

During the Stockholm Beer and Whisky Festival, last October, I had the pleasure of hosting some tastings with one of the most passionate Glenfarclas fans I have met. What makes sharing a stage with Anders Fridén unusual is his day job as lead singer with Sweden’s infamous heavy metal band In Flames. The clash of cultures could not be greater. Whisky is traditional, and single malt does not get more traditional than Glenfarclas. Our brand conjures up images of green tweed, old school ties and brown suede shoes. The heavy metal world of dreadlocks, tattoos and body piercings is alien territory for me, but as the tasting progresses, this clash of cultures seems to work.  

Since forming in 1990 In Flames have been remarkably successful, selling more than two million albums. Their most recent album was named the Best Swedish Album of the decade by readers of Aftonbladet, Sweden’s national newspaper.  

What you might wonder appeals about Glenfarclas to a heavy metal star? Anders Fridén admires our spirit of independence, the Grant family’s passion for doing things their way. He sees parallels with the way In Flames has carved their niche. He also enjoys relaxing with a good dram, particularly after a night on stage. When someone who is a leader in their field comes to us with a real passion for our whisky, it is a pleasure to work with them.

Anders’ favourite Glenfarclas is the 105, and from The Family Casks, it is the 1973, by coincidence also his year of birth. And my favourite In Flames track; check out Come Clarity on you tube…. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJojO8gNunI

A Speyside life is anything but ordinary.

Robert Ransom
January 2011

Anders on stage - left

Speyside Life – Distiller’s dilemma

One of our strengths at Glenfarclas is our stock of old whisky. We have casks from every year from 1952 to the current year. This is unusual, other larger whisky distilling companies tend to focus on blended whisky, and you do not need stock of 25 year old single malt to produce an 8 year old blend. Meanwhile other small companies have had years when they did not produce because times were tough.

So in the spirit of ‘we can, and we don’t think anyone else can’ back in 2007 John Grant decided that we should release a single cask from every year from 1952 to 1994. As I am sure you are aware we have called this collection The Family Casks, and it has caught the imagination of whisky drinkers around the world. So much so, that some casks sold out quickly. As we wish to offer as many different years as possible, we have bottled further casks. 1952 has been one of the more popular years, and we have now bottled three casks from 1952, which leaves just one cask of 1952 in our warehouse.

However we have a problem. Thanks to the thirst of the angels, the strength has dropped and is now below 40% vol. Scotch whisky is very tightly regulated to protect the quality of your dram. The regulations state a minimum strength for Scotch Whisky of 40% vol., hence the liquid remaining in 1952 Cask 1711 is no longer whisky. What can we do?

Normally such a cask would be vatted with others so the resulting liquid is over 40%, and thus can be termed Scotch whisky. Alas we have no other casks from 1952. We could use another cask from another year, but the resulting bottling would not be a 1952 Glenfarclas.

The regulations that govern Scotch whisky production also state that Scotch whisky must have been matured in oak casks for a minimum of three years. This is a bit of a hurdle if you are building a new distillery, as in effect you must wait three years before you have whisky to sell. Hence some new distilleries have released bottlings of new spirit with no reference to whisky on the label, to bring in some much needed cash in their early years.

With this in mind I thought I would investigate whether we would be able to sell 1952 Cask 1711 as ‘Glenfarclas 1952 Old Spirit’ without referring to whisky on the label. However this would also contravene the regulations, as the inclusion of the word Glenfarclas implies that the liquid is whisky, whether or not the word whisky appears on the label. Not the answer we were hoping for to solve our dilemma. We could if we wish bottle the liquid as J.& G. Grant Spirit Drink, but that does not sound particularly appealing.

What else could we do? My suggestion that we enjoy the last remaining drops of 1952 at the staff Christmas party did not get approval!

Robert Ransom
November 2010

Speyside Life - Too Much White Gold

As you may have heard, the winter of 2009-2010 has been one of the harshest in living memory in Scotland. Over the last twenty five years we have become used to mild winters. We get snow at the distillery, but after a couple of days it is followed by a thaw. Not this year. The snow started to fall in mid December, and it kept falling, and unlike other years it was not followed by a thaw. There was snow on the roof of my house from the 15^th of December to the 13^th of March. Even now, as I write in June, there is snow on the tops of the Cairngorm Mountains, to the south of Glenfarclas.

Now distilleries need snow. Water is one of only three ingredients in Malt Whisky, and we need a lot of water. A good snowfall ensures we have a good supply of water into the summer. A couple of years ago, following a mild winter and a dry spring, which led to a water shortage, we had to cut back production in May, not something we like to do.  The distillery also runs more smoothly if the water is colder, and it stands to reason, that if the water initially fell as snow, it will be colder. So important is snow that the late George Grant, the fourth generation of the family to manage Glenfarclas, described snow as ‘White Gold’.

This year however there was rather a lot of white gold, so much most distillery managers were not referring to the white gold in such an affectionate manner. Most distillery workers had trouble getting to and from work. Some were late in, other left early, but most at Glenfarclas did not miss a day, so we were able to keep the stills running.

The snow also caused quite a lot of damage. At Glenfarclas we lost gutters, and had leaking window frames, but compared to others this was a minor inconvenience. The weight of 60cm to 90cm of snowfall on some distillery warehouse roofs caused them to collapse. One distillery went to the extent of hiring a helicopter to spray antifreeze on their warehouse roofs, so as to melt the snow, and save their warehouse roofs.

Thankfully we did not loose any warehouse roofs at Glenfarclas, probably because they have all been built in the traditional dunnage style, a style which dates from the 1880s. The roofs of the traditional warehouses have much shorter spans than the more modern racked warehouses. Our approach of preserving traditions that have stood the test of time, has paid off, but in the most unlikely manner.

Robert Ransom

June 2010

Speyside Life – Celebrating the Spirit of Speyside

With more than half of Scotland’s malt whisky distilleries located in Speyside, the region is the home of malt whisky.  Our guests are often surprised by how many distilleries there are in such a small, remote, and rural corner in the north of Scotland. If you drive from Elgin to Glenfarclas, a journey which takes about half an hour, you will pass twenty distilleries. With so many distilleries, whisky is very much engrained in the local way of life. Normally we quietly enjoy the local spirit, but each year in May things are different, we celebrate with the annual Spirit of Speyside Whisky Festival.  

At Glenfarclas, as one of the few locally owned distilleries, we are proud to play our part in the festival. This year our two flagship tastings, hosted by my colleague George Grant, included a chance to be amongst the first to taste our new Glenfarclas Forty Years old, and the opportunity to help us select a cask from 1995 to be bottled as part of The Family Casks collection later this year. Along with the authors of The Whisky Kitchen recipe book; Graeme Harvey and Sheila McConachie, I hosted a Glenfarclas dinner. A wonderful feast which started with a Velouté of Haggis, Graeme’s creation, a soup made from haggis with Glenfarclas 15 Years Old.  To build up an appetite for the dinner I led a group of intrepid Glenfarclas fans across the heather to our watersource on Ben Rinnes. Where could be better to enjoy a dram of Glenfarclas 105?

Of course with more than 230 events across Speyside, the festival offers far more than what we host at Glenfarclas. The other events ranged from the Spirit of Speyside Whisky School; three days of undiluted education in the production of single malt, to the infamous Dregs Party; in the Dufftown Whisky Shop, to empty any remaining open bottles on the final night of the festival.

The festival has been going for eleven years, and it brings the distilleries and the Speyside community together. Last year a flag relay across the region was introduced to highlight the best Speyside has to offer. This year the relay ran from Benromach to Glenfarclas incorporating legs by vintage car, on horseback, by mountain bike across the wilds of Dava Moor, and a leg by canoe down the river Spey. Now I don’t own a vintage car, have only ridden once, and am not the fastest on a mountain bike, so it was left to me to venture onto the Spey with some other volunteers to take the flag downstream from Grantown to Advie. Naturally before setting of on our voyage down the river, which is one of the longest and fastest flowing in Scotland, we needed a little something to help us on our way. So after proposing a toast to the river, we shared a dram of Glenfarclas 10 Years Old from a Quaich, Scotland’s cup of friendship.  The river was kind to us, and we enjoyed the Speyside landscape from a different angle, arriving exactly on schedule at Advie Bridge to hand the flag on to the next party of flag bearers.

Plans are already well under way for the festival at the start of May next year. At Glenfarclas we will be hosting a tasting of 1996 cask samples, with a view to bottling one of them for The Family Casks collection. Once again I will host a dinner with The Whisky Kitchen team. I am already looking forward to it.

Robert Ransom
May 2010