The Scotch Whisky Association officially classifies whisky production into five regions – Highlands, Lowlands, Speyside, Islay, and Campeltown. But independent whisky specialist Matthew Fergusson-Stewart argues that those regional distinctions mean little.
by Matthew Fergusson-Stewart, co-founder of SPUN Spirits
“Bartender, I’ll have a something from the Lowlands please.”
The last thing you’d expect is something peated. Yet the biggest single malt distillery in the Lowlands today, with output of 12,000,000 litres of pure alcohol (LPA) in 2016 is Ailsa Bay, and their only single malt release to date is peated. Built by William Grant & Sons, its main purpose is to produce different styles of single malt for blending. But from a single malt consumer’s point of view, Ailsa Bay is a peated whisky, albeit sweeter and less medicinal than a whisky from Laphroaig.
We know the styles
Lowlands – light, delicate, grassy and floral, perhaps with some sweet fruit, maybe due to triple distillation as with Auchentoshan and some ghost distilleries.
Speyside – Generally sweeter and fruitier, whether it be the orchard fruits and vanilla of bourbon cask whiskies like Glenfiddich or the dried fruit and spice of sherry cask whiskies of Macallan.
Highlands – A little bolder and drier than their Speyside cousins, sometimes with a whiff of smoke or a touch of salt like Old Pulteney.
Campbeltown – Bolder still, with more smoke, more salt and sometimes a little bit of oiliness like the iconic Springbank.
Islay – The boldest of the bold, with all the smoky, peaty and medicinal notes you desire, from the bonfires of Ardbeg to the iodine of Lagavulin.
But what about Bunnahabhain, which is an unpeated Islay whisky? What about Jura and Scapa, incredibly light island whiskies that are classified as Highlanders? What about Croftengea, a super peaty gem from the Highlands?
And there’s still Ailsa Bay.
There are historic reasons for some of the classic regional differences. The Lowlands were historically light, as geography determined that they were more oriented to a bigger market to the south, with different taste preferences. Islay remained peated when the mainland turned from peat to coal for their maltings, as railways were never built to Islay and they never realised the potential cost efficiencies of using Welsh coal.
Today, we still have a notion of what the classic style is for each of the five regions recognised by the Scotch Whisky Association, but I’m going to say what I think: the regions are a load of draff. It’s true now and it becomes more pronounced every year.
It’s not a bad thing. Distilleries have broken away from the traditional styles of their regions, which were once the dictates of geography and economics. Modern transportation networks and technology have allowed distilleries to overcome those historic constraints and create exciting new whiskies. You don’t need to be on Islay to create peated whisky and you don’t need to be in the Lowlands to create light and gentle drams, because these styles are not determined by terroir but by production decisions. When it comes to single malt whisky, 99 times out of 100, production trumps terroir.
The Reason
A big part of why I love single malt whisky is that with just three simple ingredients – barley, water and yeast – over a hundred different distilleries have made thousands of different whiskies, each with unique aromas and flavours. They create these differences not simply by being in different places, but by making different decisions throughout the production process. There are literally hundreds of decision points for a distiller, some of which can be changed on a day to day basis, and some of which are tied to production equipment that changes more slowly. I’m not going to cover them all, but let’s have a look at some of the big ones.
Malting
Barley can be dried over a peat fire for smoky and peaty characteristics, it can be dried with an anthracite coal fire which has no smoke, or it can be dried with warm air heated by natural gas. And all of these things can now be easily obtained anywhere in Scotland, although coal may still be a little more expensive on Islay. And the decision isn’t just binary – barley can be partly dried with peat and then with coal, and the duration for each fuel changes the peat levels in the malt. And if you want to go further, peat itself does have a strong terroir with peat from different regions imparting different flavours to malt.
Drying the malt for longer can deliver darker malted barley that is richer in coffee, chocolate and burnt sugars, such as that used for Glenmorangie Signet. This is an area where there is far more room for experimentation and it is more than fair to say that beer makers have typically been far more creative than whisky makers in this area.
Mashing
When wort is drained from a mash tun, it can be drained quite quickly through the mash bed to produce wort that is very cloudy, and is called ‘cloudy wort’. Alternatively it can be drained more slowly to produce wort that is less cloudy, and is called ‘clear wort’. Cloudy wort tends to result in a whisky with more nutty, malty and biscuit like flavours, whereas clear wort tends to result in a whisky with lighter, fruitier and more floral characteristics.
A distillery typically uses mashing water that comes from the region where the distillery is located, which initially seems like it could be a source of strong regionality in whisky. After all, water that flows through limestone will have a different flavour than water that flows through peat or granite. However, a geological map of Scotland will show the different types of rock and soil and there is no correlation between regions and geology. And the old myth that Islay whiskies taste peaty because their water flows through peat ignores the fact that peat must be burned in order to create phenolic notes. It’s in the smoke, not the water.
Fermentation
Fermentation time is usually 48 to 100 hours, sometimes even longer. That’s a large window, and it is one of the most common ways to vary flavour and aroma in whisky. Shorter fermentation gives different flavours than long fermentation; with short fermentations supporting a final whisky with malty and biscuit like flavours and long fermentations supporting a final whisky with more fruity characteristics.
This one is a little controversial, but different strains of yeast can also give different flavours to the final spirit. Today, almost all distilleries rely on just a couple of yeast strains which are designed to maximise conversion of sugar to alcohol, lending greater efficiency. But there are older, less efficient yeasts that are believed to give more fruitiness to the spirit – Stoke Newton, for example, was previously used at both Bowmore and Laphroaig and is believed to be responsible for the tropical fruit notes of their older bottlings.
Distillation
The size and shape of still can significantly affect the flavour of a whisky. Tall thin stills increase the amount of ‘reflux’ in a still, maximising the interaction of spirit and copper. This results in light fruity flavours and aromas, such as the pear notes in Glenfiddich and Glenmorangie. Glenfiddich achieves this with small stills and Glenmorangie uses the tallest stills in Scotland. Conversely a short, fat still will tend to deliver a richer and more full-bodied spirit. In a similar manner, the Lyne arm at the top of a still can affect the whisky, as a Lyne arm that goes upwards increases reflux and a Lyne arm that goes downwards does not.
Most distilleries use steam coils to heat the stills, which is energy efficient and delivers even heating across the base of the still. Some distilleries still use the more traditional ‘direct fire’ method where a flame is applied directly to the bottom of the still and is less even, creating richer character in the spirit. Examples include the family owned distilleries of Glenfarclas, Glenfiddich and Glann Ar Mor in France. In fact, in the 1980s, Glenfarclas experimented by converting one still to steam coil heating, but the spirit was very different and they converted back to direct fire. To quote the owner John Grant, “It had no guts.”
Shell and tube condensers are highly efficient, but worm tubs condensers are said to give a slightly sweeter and more robust or oily malt. Dalwhinnie once changed from worm tubs to shell and tube but then changed back due to an unwelcome change in their spirit. Opinion is divided on exactly why this process difference changes the spirit but there is strong agreement that it does.
Every distillery cuts the foreshots and the feints after the final distillation but there is flexibility in the exact timing of the cut, and how early or late we cut significantly impacts the flavour of spirit. For example, Caol Ila and Lagavulin use malt peated to the same specifications, but Caol Ila has an earlier cut and Lagavulin has a later cut. This is partly why, despite their shared malt, Caol Ila is light, floral and moderately peated whereas Lagavulin is rich, oily and more heavily peated.
Maturation
Once their newmake spirit is ready, distilleries must choose what type of cask they want to age it in and the type of cask can make an enormous difference to flavour and aroma. Some common (and some less common) casks used are:
- Bourbon barrels – vanilla and coconut notes
- Sherry butts – dried fruit, spice and chocolate notes
- Virgin American oak – sweet spice
- Mizunara – incense
The longer a whisky is in a cask, the more the flavour and aroma will be influenced by the cask itself rather than the spirit from the still. Typically, younger whiskies have more ‘distillery character’ while older whiskies have more ‘cask character’; though this can also be influenced by how many times the cask has already been used.
A distiller must also choose where they are going to age their whisky, and in most cases this is determined by economics. That lovely salty note you get from your favourite Highland whisky is there because the whisky was aged by the sea, right? Sorry, chances are that your dram was aged in massive warehouses in the central belts of Scotland and sat next to casks from distilleries that don’t have a salty note. It’s far more efficient to administer a couple of large warehousing sites than many smaller sites spread across the country.
Post Maturation
Will it be vatted or will it be a single cask? Will it be chill filtered or not? Will it be diluted or not? Will it have colouring added or not? These four post maturation choices and their considerable interdependencies are going to affect a whisky as well.
The Alternatives
Hopefully by now it’s fairly obvious that even if regions are a small contributing factor to the flavour and character of a whisky, the choices made in production are far more significant, to the point where they almost entirely overwhelm raw geography. Experimentation, technology and transportation efficiencies have well and truly blurred those regional lines and continue to do so.
The counter-argument lingers though. If I ask a bartender for a Speyside whisky, they will know I mean the classic Speyside style, not a peated Speyside. It’s a convenient way of ordering a whisky of a style that suits your mood. But if you only ever order whisky in terms of the classic style from the region, you will miss out on many great whiskies.
If only there was another way we could find a whisky by taste, without going into detailed tasting notes! Thankfully, there are at least two.
Broom’s Whisky Atlas
Renowned whisky writer, David Broom, has plotted whiskies on a matrix using the dimensions of ‘delicate versus smoky’ and ‘light versus rich’ in his book ‘Whisky Atlas’. This provides a very simple tool for choosing or recommending an appropriate whisky for most novice and intermediate whisky drinkers. And let’s be honest, if you’re an advanced whisky drinker you don’t need much help.
The matrix is also colour coded to show the regions as you can see below. You’ll note immediately how the position of a distillery in the matrix shows very little correlation with the region it is from, perhaps with the exception of the Islay whiskies across the top in light blue. Of course, this is strongly rebutted by the presence of Bunnahabhain near the bottom.
Wishart’s Whisky Classified
Less intuitive but more deeply analytical is David Wishart’s ten Scotch whisky clusters, which were developed through sophisticated statistical analysis of tasting notes. Published in his book ‘Whisky Classified’, we again see a clustering of the heavily peated Islay whiskies, but otherwise see little consistent regionality.
The ten clusters are somewhat unromantic in terms of naming, and they are:
A – Full-bodied, medium-sweet, prominent sherry with fruity, peppery, malty notes and nutty, smoky undertone. Glendronach, Macallan.
B – Medium-bodied, medium-sweet, with nutty, malty, flowery, honey and fruity notes. Aberlour, Glenfarclas, Longmorn.
C – Medium-bodied, medium-sweet, with fruity, flowery, honey, malty notes and peppery hints. Balvenie, Glenlivet.
D – Light, medium-sweet, limited to no peat, with fruity, flowery, malty notes and nutty hints. Auchentoshan, Cardhu.
E – Light, medium-sweet, limited peat, with flowery, malty notes and fruity, peppery, honey hints. Bladnoch, Glenkinchie.
F – Medium-bodied, medium-sweet, limited peat, malty notes and sherry, honey, peppery hints. Glenrothes, Tullibardine.
G – Medium-bodied, sweet, limited peat and floral notes. Glenfiddich, Glen Spey.
H – Medium-bodied, medium-sweet, with smoky, fruity, peppery notes and flowery, nutty hints. Glenmorangie, Old Pulteney.
I – Medium-light and dry with smoky, spicy, honey notes and nutty, flowery hints. Bowmore, Highland Park.
J – Full-bodied, dry, strong, peaty and medicinal, with peppery, feinty notes. Ardbeg, Lagavulin, Laphroaig.
The real whisky geeks among you may be interested in getting hold of the book as he also discusses correlation between regions and his categories and other than for Islay finds very little of significance.
The Reality
The regions aren’t going away. They are, and will remain shorthand for communicating simplified meaning and for planning holidays. But like all simplifications they stifle nuance and potentially hinder the development of a more sophisticated understanding of the topic. But recognising that there are situations where the shorthand is useful and situations where are more nuanced view of whisky flavour is far more insightful, and learning to distinguish between the two, will make us all far more effective whisky students and teachers.
I’m done with regions; I’m feeding them to the cows.
*a version of this article was first published in Cask & Drams.
Matthew Fergusson-Stewart is an independent whisky expert and the co-founder of SPUN Spirits. Fergusson-Stewart has spent over 17 years in the whisky business, including running The Auld Alliance – which houses Southeast Asia’s largest whisky selection – and spent more than five years as an award-winning brand ambassador for Glenfiddich. In 2016, he was awarded the highly prestigious industry award – Icons of Whisky Scotch Whisky Brand Ambassador of the Year 2017 (rest of the world).
Follow us on Telegram to get updated on events and other spirited announcements!
