Whisky, in all its iterations, is not just an end product, not just a drink...though it is a good one at that. It is a science, an art, alchemy and magic, geography and history, and it is people (um, not like soylent green...).
There are many exemplary sites out there on the making and tasting of whisky, and I don't intend on reinventing that wheel. I just want to bring some story to what I think is a fascinating process.
You can see more whisky photographs as well as not-just-whisky photographs and ramblings if you follow the links in the sidebar. Please take
a look...or not.

Showing posts with label barley. Show all posts
Showing posts with label barley. Show all posts

October 6, 2010

tribute

Just got back from Scotland where I picked up a copy of "Discovering Scotland's Distilleries" by Gavin D. Smith and Graeme Wallace - a neat little publication which has nicely updated the state of affairs. The book tells me that Tamdhu has been closed down (the Edrington Group website says it was "mothballed" in March of this year - OK, so I'm not the one to come to for the latest industry news!). Shame, since the dram I'm drinking is quite tasty (distillery release, no age statement).

We had a wonderful tour of their maltings in 2008, very informative and personal, with Heather Anderson, the distillery manager's wife. The maltings may still be operating, I don't know. When you get to meet the people who have a direct role in the crafting of our whisky, one feels a modicum of personal loss when a distillery like Tamdhu is considered redundant by its corporate owners. One wonders what happens to the people you've met...here are a few of them.


sign in a stone wall at Tamhdu Distillery

...another one bites the dust


Heather Anderson opens the lid of the barley screener at Tamdhu Distillery

...peering into the barley screener


damp barley in the steep at Tamdhu Distillery

...emptying the steeped barley


spraying damp barley into the Saladin box for germinating at the Tamdhu Distillery

...casting the steeped barley to the Saladin box for germination


shovelling out the malted barley from the Saladin box at Tamdhu Distillery

...emptying the Saladin box, the barley being ready for the kiln

See www.whisky.com/brands/tamdhu_brand.html for more information on Tamdhu.


Slàinte

April 12, 2010

food for thought

Grab a dram, I'm gonna wax poetic on ya'.
Consider this...10, 12, 15 years ago (18, 21?...lucky you) the whisky in your glass was a plant, struggling in the soil for survival, seeking out its own water of life. Barley. If lucky, it experienced the right environmental conditions to grow into a strapping young kernel. If not, then it returned to the soil to help nourish the next lucky one. But it was a living thing nonetheless.

All too often we disregard the history of the food we put into our mouths in order to nurture our bodies. If we considered where our food comes from a little more, then perhaps we'd be less inclined to mistreat the gardens of our very existence, the air, water, and soil which give us life. You'd better take a sip, I think I'm getting too melodramatic here.

Back to the barley. It never ceases to amaze me that whisky is just that, plus water and yeast, which is also a living thing. And if you want to get really metaphysical, so is water. In the end, is it any wonder that whisky gained its name from the Gaelic term uisge beatha, itself descended from the Latin meaning "water of life".

There aren't many distilleries which are able to facilitate the entire cycle of whisky making from barley to bottle. Many don't strive to, but some make it a part of their mission statement. It takes a lot of homegrown barley to satisfy an entire mashbill. Even small distilleries like Kilchoman on Islay only presently grows 30% of their own, and they don't (yet) have a bottling facility. The young Abhainn Dearg on the west coast of Lewis is giving it a go, if the Atlantic lets them. Not sure how much Islay barley Bruichladdich manages to bring in, but they may be the closest to the goal, even though they don't malt at the distillery.

So, this blog entry is in celebration of the lowly barleycorn, that often overlooked but essential first component that is the root of all whisky, from which all our drams stem, the seeds of our mal(t)content...OK, OK, here are the photographs.


stubble and bales of straw from barley destined for Bruichladdich Distillerythe stubble from Golden Promise barley harvested for the Macallan

The top one is harvested Bruichladdich barley. How do I know it was destined for the Laddie? I tasted a few grains left in the field which the birds hadn't gotten to and compared it to the new make I had just tasted at the distillery and...well, OK, I just read the sign on the fencepost which said so. The other image is what's left of a field of Golden Promise barley (what a great name) grown for the Macallan. No telling fencepost sign, but the folks at the distillery.


birds above a field of harvested barley

Here, Islay birds feast on what John Barleycorn didn't get.


Slàinte