Balvenie Scotch Whisky
The purpose of this article to share with you more information about the wonderful world of Balvenie Scotch Whisky.
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Proper Categorization
To start with we first must appreciate that regional categorization is a vexed issue in whisky. It may be a handy way of grouping distilleries together geographically, but it can be a tricky business identifying a stylistic continuity between all the whiskies in Perthshire or Speyside.
However, you can’t claim the existence of a ‘Speyside style’ or qualities that make Speyside the best whisky-making region. So, how do you explain such a large concentration of distilleries? Especially since, in the early days of whisky making, it was such a remote part of the world.
The Mystique of Scotch
David Stewart, William Grant’s grandly-titled Malt Master, is happy to admit ignorance on this point. “All of the quality distilleries are here in this central part of Speyside,” he says. “That’s the mystique of Scotch, we’ve all got highly-sophisticated equipment, but we can’t tell what makes the difference”. He’s pretty sure what makes Balvenie such a dramatically different dram to Glenfiddich, even though they share the same site and use the same malt and water.
Mr. Stewart can be noted during his 50 years at William Grant & Sons, where David developed an award-winning range of single malts and blends which earned him some of the industry’s top accolades and helped the independent William Grant & Sons become Distiller of the Year an unprecedented five times by the International Spirits Challenge (ISC), four times by the International Wine and Spirit Competition (IWSC) and for the first time by the World Whiskies Awards in 2011. We think that he is a tremendous advocate who has earned his position and respect in the industry.
To continue, “the character for a scotch comes from the still. Glenfiddich is coal fired, Balvenie is gas fired. The shape of the stills is different: Balvenie has bigger stills with shorter necks and that’s where the flavours change. Maybe the ten percent of floor-malted barley helps, but I think it’s the stills.”
Wood Management
Other influential factors include great wood management and the use of old dunnage warehouses. “It’s not just age that makes whisky great,” says David. “It’s age and wood.” This underpins his decision to make life interesting (or difficult) for himself by creating a Balvenie range in which each malt shows a subtly different wood influence.
“If we were just to age the Founder’s Reserve and do it as a 12-year-old or a 15-year-old, we wouldn’t see much difference between them. We had to take a different route, so we produced Double Wood, [where the malt is aged for 10 years in ex-Bourbon barrels and finished in sherry butts]. Then we started doing Single Barrel, and at a higher strength with no chill filtering; then Port Wood and now vintage casks.”
This freedom to experiment is one of the advantages of Grant’s family-owned status. “We can do things quickly. The family is steeped in whisky, but we are encouraged to be innovative, we can go against the trend -with the Balvenie range, or with Black Barrel, where we were determined to make the only single grain whisky that really works.”
Hopefully you enjoyed this journey, and if you did, go ahead and try some of the fantastic Balvenie scotch whisky the world has to offer!
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Drew Farion: Your Eclectic Connoisseur Correspondent
