(slow paced music)
- This is the story of whiskey
and I start it right here in the heart of Tokyo.
Around these streets are bars crammed
with people imbibing the amber liquid.
It'll be a fascinating journey,
so come with me as I tell the story of
Scotland's gift to the world.
(determined music)
I'm going on a pilgrimage to find out why
such a simple drink has come to mean so much.
- Hi, my name's Jim from Scotland.
- [Host] From the makers to the marketeers
and the chemists to the cocktail makers
and from the Highlands to Hobart in Tasmania.
I'll be meeting the people and traveling
to the places immersed in Scottish
whiskey's waddled.
This is the tale of an ancient craft
that became a global Colossus
that is the tale of scotch.
(determined music)
- [Narrator] The one country
that has given it's name unchallengeably
to a product that is known and accepted
in every corner of the world.
Scotch, enjoyed by all peoples on all occasions.
(ominous music)
- [Host] For half a millennium
Scotch whisky has been made by the fermenting
and distilling of water and barley.
The spirit these ingredients conjure up
is then filtered into oak casks and left to mature.
It is a raw simple recipe and yet
the result is a drink loved by millions
of people across the planet.
- The nature of distillation is that distillers use
what grow around them.
You know so if you're in France you use grapes
to make brandy.
If you're in Mexico use agave to make mescal or tequila.
If you're in the Caribbean, use cane to make rum.
And Scotland, Scotland's geology means we grow barley.
So immediately you're talking about
distillers having a sense of place
and a sense of location.
And their spirits are embedded within the ground
and the soil and I would also argue
the culture of that place.
- In simple terms it's distilled beer.
And you know made from good Scottish barley normally
and nice good water.
- This is Scotland as seen through whisky.
Each light represents one of Scotland's
118 working distilleries.
Each twinkle is where the alchemy happens
and whisky is born.
By tradition there are five main whisky regions.
Highland,
Speyside,
Islay,
Campbeltown,
and Lowland.
Most of these distilleries produce malt whisky
made from barley.
Some of it is drunk a single scotch
but most of it goes into blended whisky.
And just as vital for blends is grain whiskey
produced in seven distilleries across Scotland.
And when you view all of it together
from this perspective its truly breathtaking.
A tiny country on the
fringes of northwestern Europe produces
an amber liquid that spreads around the world.
No wonder Scotland regards itself as the home of whiskey.
It can feel as if that status is
under threat from a number of pretenders to the throne.
Fellow whiskey giants like Japan and America
are chasing Scotland's crown.
Scottish distilleries are being bought up
by multinational companies.
And there is an energetic craft whisky movement
with fresh methods of production.
Scotch is at a crossroads.
No pretender though, will ever have Scotch
whisky's greatest advantage.
The way it is interlaced with the identity
of an entire nation.
- The production of whiskey
is sort of woven into the texture and fabric
of the nation from Lowlands to Highlands.
You don't get too far without
being touched by whiskey in one respect or another okay.
So it's footprint covers the nation.
- It's a bit like in Canada
people talk about oh the Mounties are
you know part of Canadian fabric and the
maple leaf and things like that.
You have these symbols that represent a country
and I have to say if ever there was a
symbol that represented a country Scotch whisky
has got to take the top honors.
- Passion I think is the one word if
somebody said how would you describe and
define scotch, passion.
And that's from the people who create it to the people
who drink it to the people who market it
and package it, passion is always at the
heart of scotch.
- The writer Charlie McLean described it as
the blood of one small nation.
(slow paced music)
- This is a drink of heartfelt sentiment
and a character trait of Scotland itself.
Yet the dram reaches our lips via a
colossal global industry.
In whiskey there is money,
vast amounts of it.
And down the years multinational companies
some from outside of Scotland in the UK
have bought up Scotland's whiskey distilleries.
The largest is Diageo, a British company
which own 28.
Chiva's brothers, a French company owned 15.
Largely concentrated around Speyside.
And in fact, France is still the largest
consumer of Scotch whisky in the world.
Bacardi has another five.
Beam Suntory, a Japanese company,
has five as do Thai in Philippine corporations.
Large-scale Scottish ownership is sadly rare.
William Grant has five distilleries,
Edrington four.
And right across Scotland you have
the independents like Spring Bank
and Campbeltown or the new craft distilleries
which are part of a burgeoning scene.
But there's also a sadness
in the fact that whisky has moved so far
from it's homely origins and that only a fraction
of the vast wealth it creates stays within these shores.
This is so much more than a drink.
It's an industry, it's a brand.
(slow paced music)
This is Sterling, the ancient capital of Scotland.
And looking east from here towards Oliver,
lying between us is another capital.
It's the capital of the biggest manufacturer
of spirits in the world.
There's also the biggest manufacturer of Scotch whisky
and it's owned by Diageo
and it is an effect, an empire.
(triumphant music)
Diageo's black grange warehouse site
stretches out over 250 acres
and has the capacity to store over
3 million casks of whiskey.
There are 10 miles of roadway here
and Blackgrange even has its own fire brigade.
It is just one portion of this 50 billion
pound drinks company.
- Well, I think empire is probably a key word,
because the growth of Scotch
really went in parallel with two or three things.
The first was the growth of the British Empire,
the colonial economy,
Scotsmen travelling all over the world
taking a thirst and a love for whisky with them.
which is really what promoted the earliest exports
in the 1850s and 1860s.
And then from the Empire you have the growth
of global economies,
and Scotch whisky, whether people like it or not,
is a global drink.
It's Scotland's gift of the world.
And it was--
- That's a lovely way of putting it.
- It is, isn't it?
- It is our gift of the world, yes.
- It's absolutely true.
And along with that went, I think, another gift
from Scotland, which was in the late 19th
and early 20th century,
astonishing visionary entrepreneurship.
You know, the people like the Ballantines
and the Chivas brothers,
and the Johnnie Walkers and the Dewars,
these guys who took this crofting thing,
this wonderful drink,
and had the vision to turn it into something
on an absolutely global scale.
Which meant inventing things like,
what you're seeing today was invented about 100 years ago.
The logistics on a huge scale
that people never thought of doing.
- The fundamentals are still the same.
- Absolutely the same.
- And the process has been refined.
- Yeah.
The process has been refined,
but the thing about these early entrepreneurs,
which actually is what you've been seeing as well today,
they were obsessed by quality.
They're obsessed by quality and obsessed by consistency.
So how you make your stills, how you make your barrels,
how you put your blends together,
is what's going to give you the drink
that will conquer the world.
And that's what they wanted to do then,
and that's what we do now,
we just do it at this huge scale.
- [Host] Where the small distillery or industrial titan,
whiskey is underpinned by traditional craft skills.
Whiskey production will always need human hands.
Despite its own size Diageo seem to know
this homely truth as I found in visits
to their coppersmiths and then cooperage.
Charlie where are we going now?
- So this is the copper shop where we
fabricate all the copper cells.
We obviously have to keep it separate from
the other metals that we are fabricate
and then so we don't get cross-contamination
of the different materials.
- They're beautiful beasts, aren't they?
I love them!
I love the way the light catches them,
you know, the burnished copper.
- [Charlie] They actually look like sculptures in copper.
- [Host] They do.
- [Charlie] They are like works of art.
- There are different shapes,
different shapes for different distilleries.
- Yes.
- So these are made to order?
- Yes, these are for Mannochmore.
And if we went back,
I'll have the original engineering drawings for these.
So we don't have to design ourselves,
we just replicate exactly
what they've got in the distillery.
- You have to touch it, don't you?
It feels alive, it really does, and hear the echo.
Most of this is done by hand?
- All of the important parts are done by hand, yes.
The shape of the still is probably the most critical part
in the whisky-making process.
What happens is,
as the spirit vapours run up,
more and more of them will condense
on the side of the still.
They'll run back down into liquid, and be re-distilled.
And the more times that happens,
the lighter the character of the whisky you will get.
- And that will ultimately affect
the final flavour of the whisky?
- It takes the character of the whisky, yes.
- [Host] Fittingly, for a drink steeped in mythology,
there seems to be little agreement about what exactly
makes whisky's flavour.
- [Charlie] You cannot make whisky unless you use copper.
- You would say that.
- No, no, the scientists,
the clever people have tried, not me.
They have tried in the past, it's got to be copper.
- Tell me, how much do you think the copper influences
the final taste of the whisky?
- Absolutely.
You can put it in barrels to get flavour enhancement
and copper determines--
- What do you mean you can put it in barrels?
You have to put it in barrels.
- You but you can do it in different types of barrels
to get flavour enhancements.
But copper's the most important part
of the whisky-making process.
That determines the character of your whisky.
- You're a hard man to argue with, Charlie.
(loud thuds)
By law all scotch whiskeys
for the home market have to mature for
at least three years and the casks in
which they're stored are all important.
Used cherry casks made of stout Spanish oak
have a special place in the scotch whiskey industry.
So what are these guys doing?
- Well what they are doing here David is
these are actually ex-wine casks that have been
broken down and palletised.
So basically have been used in the wine industry.
What the guys are doing is taking them off the parts
and putting them onto the bottles here.
And typically will raise that cask.
So you can see from that Steve
that's actually been a red wine cask.
So what we will do with that is
through the process we will refire our cask
and put a nice char on that cask.
That's exactly what we're looking for.
The cask is the most important thing
for the whiskey industry.
That's where the whiskey is mature
and that's where it gets its flavor and it's color from.
It's very important to the whiskey.
The whiskey industry.
- There you see the copper workers
when they make the stills who would
would just agree with you, I agree with you.
I think it's the cast that makes it,
that gives you the predominant taste in the whiskey.
- Yeah, I mean the coppersmiths play a very important part,
you know, for distinctive distilleries
and getting the flavour as well.
But for me the important part is really the casting.
How it goes through the maturation process
and the warehouses so it's very important for us.
- What puts the flavor into a whiskey
are a lot of things.
And sometimes you easily say that it's
around 60 70% of the flavor comes
from the barrel, from the maturation,
from the oak.
It could very well be but the
thing with producing malt whiskies that
we really don't know exactly where the
flavor comes from.
It probably comes from
the barley as well.
Least of all it comes from the water.
I can probably say that.
- We used to notice when we were loading
the whiskey that if a man came on shift
and he had a fight with his wife before
he came on shift,
his attitude to distilling was very different
if he just come out having giving her a nice kiss
before he left.
It was completely different approach.
A loving approach in the one hand
and a hateful approach on the other.
And the whiskey definitely,
you know, reflected that kind of attitude.
- People who know their craft,
they know when the spirit is right,
they know when those casks are
able to be reused or if they should have a stave changed.
There's these little bits that are you know,
science is hugely important to it
and we can't deny that.
But humans and our impact on it
and how each person makes their whisky in their own way
or each distillery does is still very important I think.
And that adds the slight magic to it as well.
- I'm an advocate of it of the magic here.
But behind all the magically there is a logic
and science but it is more about
feeling of understanding the whisky.
And understanding the DNA of the whisky.
Are we actually we for almost every cask
we have we have a got a fingerprint of
how it's been developing over the last
whatever, eight, nine, 10 years.
- Cask separately I've cast the last an excess
of 100 years.
You know so casks come in here, we'll rejuvenate the cask
and we might not see again for 25 or 30 years.
Then I'll come back again and we can rejuvenate it again.
And it goes on like that.
Okay David, so this, as you can see,
this is a cask that's been through the charring process.
You can see the nice char we've got inside the cask.
That's exactly what we're looking for,
a good uniformed char.
- [Host] The edge is really blackened, isn't it?
- [Charlie] Yes, it's really black.
- [Host] And then do you scrape that?
- That's it finished, that's it ready for filling now,
that's exactly what we're looking for.
- So you'll put the liquor straight into that barrel now?
- Yes, absolutely, yeah yeah.
- Since this has been in the furnace there,
the internal flames, it hasn't been touched?
It's only been sprayed with water to cool it down,
and that's it?
- Yes, that's it.
What we'll do now is we'll put the
cask ends back in the cask,
retighten the hoops and off it'll go
and that will be filled in the filling store today,
and be back in the warehouses, if not tonight, tomorrow.
And it will lie there for another five, six, whatever years.
- And this all ends up in my single malt whisky?
- That's what helps it, yeah.
That's how you can sit back and enjoy it.
- No wonder I like burnt toast!
(laughter)
(determined music)
(loud thuds)
- David, I'd like to introduce you
to a couple of the guys here.
This is Paul.
Paul's a third year apprentice.
- Nice to meet you.
- [Charlie] And this is John, John's his tutor.
This is David.
- Coopering isn't for everyone.
Obviously, a laddie who's got a
good bit of strength about him helps.
If you're a good build laddie it helps,
but when I started I was tiny, I was a wee skinny thing.
That's what your apprenticeship's all about,
for the four years it helps build up your core,
your body strength to become,
the end result is a cooper.
It's not something that happens overnight,
as I say, four years.
That's it been cut back, it used to be a lot longer,
five years, seven years.
When my grandfather was a cooper it was seven,
sometimes nine.
So...
- Surely that was just an excuse
not to pay them a full wage?
- [John] Maybe!
- [Host] Rather than taking seven or eight years to train.
- A lot of the system was changed by machines,
so a lot of the hand work was taken out of it.
What we're left with now is just the core.
This is something that they really need to learn.
Basically, if they were wanting to go anywhere in the world
they would be employable anywhere.
They could make a barrel anywhere, not just in Diageo.
- Each year the Scotch whisky industry
adds five billion pounds of value
to the UK economy.
Vital to Scotch whisky is the export market.
This drink now reaches 175 countries.
Over 1 billion bottles of Scotch whisky
are exported annually,
at a value of around four billion pounds.
It also contributes one billion pounds to the UK Exchequer,
with an average bottle taxed at a rate of 76%
in VAT and excise duty.
Whisky and tax have long gone together.
The mother of parliaments,
its tentacles spread across the land,
ensnaring all in their wake.
They always have.
And in the century after the Act Of Union,
this place grappled hard with the whisky industry.
What Westminster wanted to do was to
curb excessive drinking,
while at the same time reap the revenues from whisky sales.
So, throughout the 18th century,
Westminster churned out legislation
that entangled distilleries large and small.
Therefore, Islay, Campbeltown, and Speyside,
the whisky making went underground
so the amber nectar became moonshine
and Scotland's illicit stills flourished.
While the taxed industry ploughed on,
the moonshiners thrived.
Hidden from view and hard to reach
for the dreaded excised man,
illicit distillers perfected their craft.
Theirs became the whisky drunk not only by crofters,
peasants and the urban poor, but by the aristocracy too.
- The illicit whisky was seen as the true quality.
So it was asked for
on King George IV's visit of Scotland,
1822.
Sir Walter Scott very carefully stage-managed,
the King asked for a drop of the real Glenlivet,
long in the wood, and long in uncorked bottles.
So, you know, street cred was pretty good,
he was asking for Glenlivet.
And from that, the reform of the distilling
acts were speeded up by the landed gentry
who wanted to see an end to the illicit distilling,
but saw that there was
a way of improving their estates, et cetera.
And controlling it, of course.
- In the 1820s,
law changes eased conditions and taxation
and turned the old centers
of illicit distilling into booming,
legitimate whisky areas.
Among them, Campbelltown flourished.
This is Campbelltown.
It was once Whisky Mecca,
for in its heyday it had 34 distilleries.
Sadly, today, there are only three.
Up every alleyway was a portal to another distillery.
The air must have hung like a strange perfume,
heady, intoxicating, delightful.
You can almost sense the ghosts of distilleries past.
"Campbeltown Loch, I wish you were whisky,"
were the words of an old music hall song,
and it might just as well have been,
because this bay would have swarmed with ships ready to take
the liquid delights from Campbeltown out across the oceans
to the rest of the world.
Campbeltown thrived thanks to its deep natural harbour,
rich raw materials and ready access to the ocean.
And therefore, export markets.
In Victorian times it was nicknamed the Whisky Metropolis.
Then after World War I, a dreadful combination of factors
all but ended whisky making here.
This is the shell of one of the 34 distilleries
that used to exist in Campbeltown.
The ghosts of whisky past.
The only spirits that are here now
are the spirits of the whisky makers of bygone days.
God, I bet these stones could tell a tale or two.
(slow paced music)
Campbeltown had produced too much whisky,
much of it low in quality,
at a time when consumption levels were falling.
What's more, natural resources were running low,
and the railways that helped roll Highland
and Speyside whisky out to the markets never arrived here.
It's time to find an antidote to that tale of woe,
a place where the best of Campbeltown
remains well and truly alive.
This is Springbank distillery in the heart of Campbeltown
and it's a very unique place I've always wanted to visit.
For a start it's been owned by the same whisky family
for over 200 years.
And also, every single part
of the whisky making process,
from the malting, the distilling,
the maturing and the bottling is all done on site,
and I'm going to witness the whole process.
Springbank is at the center of the community here
and employs more than 70 locals.
(loud hissing)
Today I'm joining them, having enrolled in one of
their whisky schools under the capable guidance of Kerry,
who has worked her way up from shop floor to distiller.
Kerry, how long has this been soaking?
- This has been soaking for two days,
12 hours at a time.
So the first time we'll soak it for 12 hours,
we'll leave it to dry for 12 hours.
- Leave it to dry in here in the tank?
- Yeah.
And then we'll re-fill it with water for 12 hours,
and then again dry for 12
before it's laid out onto the floor.
- [Host] Tip it up.
- You tip it up, you pull it back.
- [Host] Starch in the barley has been modified
so that later in the process, it will become sugar.
(slow paced music)
The new barley is wet and warm.
In three days, some whiskery roots appear.
After seven days it's almost ready for the drying.
As the barley dries,
it is regularly turned to help its germination.
- You'll see it actually lifting from the bottom
and throwing it over, so it's turning.
- We've been making whiskies, most of us, for a long time.
So, yeah,
it's part of our rhythm of life.
The year goes round, a distilling year,
very much like a farming year,
which we are connected to.
The crops are being put in just now,
we'll be watching the progress of the barley
throughout Scotland for the next few months,
we'll watch the harvest, et cetera.
And, yes, it's just,
I live in a village where there are
10 distilleries so I can't help
but bumping into folk that are involved in distilleries.
(slow paced music)
- [Host] Being a student of whisky made me realize
the amount of hard toil that goes into distilling
when it's undertaken traditionally,
as it is here at Springbank.
You earn your dram.
- [Kerry] This is quite steep.
- [Host] Ooh!
- You can smell it, you can smell the peat,
the smell of smoke.
So this is the first half we put away this morning.
This is the second half just dropping in now.
So what you've seen from above,
this is where it's dropping into.
- That's coming off the conveyor belt upstairs?
- [Kerry] Exactly, and dropping in, yeah.
- [Host] A conveyor belts transports the barley into a kiln,
where it is either dried or smoked with peat,
depending on the type of whisky being made.
As we're making a batch of peaty whisky,
it's time to light the fire.
I'm just about to set Springbank distillery on fire.
It's this peat reek, an essential part of the process
which helps to give the malt whiskies their individuality.
(slow paced music)
The dried malt is stored ready for use.
A grinding mill,
the first of many modern machines in today's process,
replaces the two flat stones used by our great-grandfathers.
The malt is reduced to grist,
coarse, medium,
and fine.
Next, Springbank veteran Gavin
takes me to the Porteous rolling mill,
where the peat smoked barley is ground down to become grist.
- It's easier for the water.
- [Host] Then a process called mashing takes place.
In a mash tun,
the grist is mixed with hot water to change its starch
into fermentable sugars.
Oh, there's life going on in there, isn't there?
The sugary liquid produced, called wort,
is then put into wash bags.
Yeast is added and fermentation begins,
resulting in a beer-like liquid known as wash,
of around 8% to 10% ABV.
- It'll go around, eating up all the sugars,
converting it into alcohol.
- You know, the whole thing's live,
that's an organic process going on here,
gurgling and bubbling.
It's quite ferocious, more powerful than I thought.
- Get the vapours from that, eh?
- I'm really getting the vapour.
- [Gavin] Clears the sinuses.
- [Host] This wash is transferred into copper stills,
heated and then distilled twice to create clear,
new make spirit.
There must be some heat in there.
Springbank has a wonderful old-fashioned atmosphere,
and traditional way of doing things,
even down to the warning bell that tells the workers
that everything is running to plan.
- Hazelburn's one, two, three.
But the Springbank's at one, two and a half.
- The distiller must be able to judge exactly
which part of the spirit
from the second distillation is to be retained as new make,
checking on its progress as it runs through the spirit safe.
Now, do you do it,
when you know when the middle part is ready,
do you do it by taste,
or by smell, or by sight?
- It's all done by temperature.
As well, when it's coming in.
You'll know as well, it will be cloudy to start
when they're checking the glasses.
And then when you go on to clear spirits,
the first 45 minutes is bad, as you call it,
that's all your bad spirit.
We don't take that.
- Will you recycle that?
- Yeah, that goes back in the pipes.
As we're Scottish, we don't waste anything.
Everything gets reused right down to 1%.
- We're getting near the end of the process, Gavin.
- The cask will sit here,
you lift this up, it's like a petrol pump.
When the spirit hits the bottom of the nozzle, it cuts out,
and it records on the meter there
how many litres is going in the cask.
And then from here it is taken to the warehouse
and stored for maturation.
- Once the new make has been filtered into oak casks,
it is left to mature for three years and a day,
only after which can it legally be called whisky.
Single malts like Springbank though,
are usually matured for at least a decade
and often much longer.
I never knew it was that easy
to break open a cask of whisky.
(slow paced music)
Slainte.
These days, on-site drinking is usually confined
to visits and open days,
a core part of many a distillery's business model.
Springbank's open day takes place once a year,
and is attended by people from across the world.
- I am attending Springbank whisky school, which is great.
- And have you learned much from it?
- Yes, I thought there was not too much they
could tell me, but, yes,
I've learned a lot from it.
Coming to Scotland in 1992, I was just over the age
where I was allowed to drink,
and I didn't have much money so I visited four distilleries,
because at this time it was free.
Today, it's a big business, but at this time it was free,
it was marketing.
So I visited four distilleries, got four great drams,
so every time was saying, "Why are these drams different?"
And that got me into wanting to know more about whisky.
It's my 18th time coming to Scotland now.
- 18th?
- Yes.
I'm also coming for other reasons, for the people,
for the landscape, for everything,
but whisky is still the main reason for me to come here.
- [Host] Springbank is special.
It is as close as Scottish distilleries
get to the original model.
The place is rooted in the local community,
something that shows in the merry band of workers
who get the whisky into bottles and finally to market.
- Shoot, you've bottled four Springbank bottles.
- Even if you hold it up that way,
even if there was a blemish on the back,
you can see it right through.
- Did I put two labels on?
Would anyone notice?
Don't tell anybody, will you?
My secret's safe with you.
(fast paced music)
Thank you.
- You're welcome.
- That's the best birthday present I've ever had, honest.
- [Narrator] The Highland malt whiskies used
in any Scotch blend of real consequence
must each be aged in oak.
Scotch in the bottle will never improve.
There is another magic secret in the creation
of an outstanding Scotch blend,
and that is that there must be
a combination of many individual distillates
if there is to be a well-rounded, tasteful,
distinctive Scotch of best quality.
- [Host] While Springbank thrives on its single malts alone,
the strength of the whiskies industry has, in fact,
long been built on the back of blended whiskies.
A blended whisky contains many single malts and,
just as crucially, grain whisky.
It was a technological development in the distilling
of grain that changed Scotch whisky for ever.
Though makers had long blended their wares,
mass production of blends became possible after 1830.
That year an Irishman, Aeneas Coffey,
refined a Scottish invention, the continuous still.
His development, creating what is now known
as the Coffey still,
meant grain whisky could be made on an enormous scale,
and at low cost.
From the 1850s it was mixed with single malts
to create blends and trailblazing Scots
peddled them across the world.
- So you had a generation of Scots entrepreneurs
who grabbed these technological changes,
who looked at the evolution in the marketplace,
who looked at the legislative changes and said,
"We can come up with a product
"that fits better in the marketplace."
And so the DNA of the great blends
goes back to those days.
So there was a Mr. Buchanan, there was a Mr. Hague,
there was a Mr. Walker, there was a Mr. Dewar.
And so a Dewar's blend today,
a Walker's blend today,
has its roots in what Mr. Dewar or Mr. Walker did,
historically in the mid and late 19th century.
So Walker, for example,
always had at its heart west coast whiskies.
Dewar's blend always had Perthshire whiskies at its heart.
- Going from the background of having licensed grocers
that blended tea,
so had this ability to take different flavours
and characteristics and blend them together
and then started blending whisky,
and then you begin getting these individuals that start,
really, travelling the world extensively
and selling our wares and going out there as pioneers.
You know, there's a number of well-known brands, nowadays,
which are blends that all carry people's names.
And to be able to tell to international visitors
when they come in, "This is not a name that we made up."
That some marketing agency 10 or 20 years ago thought,
"That sounds like a great Scottish name.
"That sounds like a nice picture, let's put that."
It's true.
It's genuine, authentic heritage,
and these are the people that made the blends,
these and their families and their ancestors
were the people that took them to market,
that were these pioneers that in some cases
where these eccentric characters.
That, I think, is one of the cornerstones of Scotch whisky
which makes it so successful in terms of its competition.
Is that it has this real authenticity behind it
in these huge international brands.
- [Host] The ingenuity of these blend pioneers
met with a vital piece of good fortune
for Scottish whisky when, in 1871,
the phylloxera virus destroyed French vineyards.
- With the vineyards destroyed,
little or no brandy could be produced,
and so whisky, which up until then
had been the drink very much more of the working man,
was allowed to move into that space
in the market that had hitherto
been taken by brandy
which was the drink of the middle and upper classes,
who would not have touched whisky.
But along came branding to make it more acceptable,
blending to make the product more palatable,
patriotism to make it an acceptable thing to drink,
and a shortage of supply of brandy.
The most popular middle-class drink in London at the time
is brandy and soda.
All of a sudden you've got Scots and the Irish going,
"Hello, we can actually do that as well, you know."
And they reformulate the blends to make sure it does go
with soda or ginger ale or whatever.
All of a sudden you've got popularity,
you've got middle-class respectability.
That's the way any drink is built,
as long as you've got a middle-class behind you,
you're going to be fine.
- [Host] With the vineyards barren for another 25 years,
Scotch whisky now only had one rival competitor, Ireland.
Prohibition in the USA became a victory for Scotland.
Various bootleggers head across to Ireland
and knock on the door of Mr. Jamieson,
Mr. Roe, Mr. Power and they go,
"Listen guys, ship the stuff to Canada
"or to Bermuda or wherever.
"My friend Mr. Capone here, you can trust him,
"he will ship it in for you.
"You will have done nothing illegal.
"All you'll have done is shipping to somewhere
"where booze is legal."
The Irish distillers, to a man, said, "Be gone with you."
They then moved from Ireland across to London,
and up to Glasgow,
to all the blending houses and said exactly the same spiel.
"So how much exactly do you want?"
- Increasingly, Scottish blends were made
for American tastes,
lighter and suited to being drunk with a mixer.
One such blend was Cutty Sark,
created in 1923 and now made alongside Famous Grouse
by Edrington in Glasgow's Drumchapel.
This is Drumchapel, where I spent 10 years
growing up as a boy,
and in contrast to the tenements of the East End of Glasgow,
it was a paradise.
But now it is home to Famous Grouse whisky,
and it's changed a lot in those years.
Now, I often think that the magic
and the mystery of whisky is in the soil,
in the barley and in the water
and in the hands that make it,
but actually there is a very profound science
behind the making of the drams we know and love,
and when I tell you that 90% of the whiskies
we export around the world are blended whiskies,
then you'll understand the need for that science.
And I'm about to look into it.
Kirsteen Campbell is master blender for Famous Grouse
and Cutty Sark.
Kirsteen, you're a noser and a spitter.
What a hell of a way to make a living.
- Well, yeah, I guess it is.
We are referred to as nosers within the industry,
and the majority of my work is done by nosing.
But you're quite right,
we do on occasion have to taste the whiskies,
but when you're looking at up to 600 samples a day,
you couldn't possibly taste them all, so that's where
the elegant spitting comes in. - 600 a day!
- [Host] So you spit into a bucket?
- Yes, we do, we do, but it's really just at the final stage
where I tend to taste the whiskies,
or if I'm developing new ones.
Otherwise it's all done by nose.
- So the nose is really important isn't it?
- Absolutely, yes, yes.
- So tell me the process you go through,
because you see, I'm a single malt man.
I live and die by single malts,
and I think blended whisky's for boiling your tatties in.
I know, you see, that's sacrilege to you.
So convince me of the beauty of blends.
- You know, you need to be open about blending,
rejoice in blending.
It's a creative process,
it's not just a matter of taking this distillery
and that distillery and some grain whisky,
bunging it together and you're going to get
the same end result.
Because distilleries open, distilleries close,
and companies fall out and stock supplies are,
you might have a surplus, you might have a scarcity.
And each cask is going to be different,
so what a master blender does is actually look at all
of the possibilities that they have in front of them,
and tweak that recipe.
So they might have a recipe,
but it will be tweaked every single time
a vatting is going to be made.
There might be a little bit more grain,
there might be a little less of that first fill sherry,
there might be a different distillery coming in
or combinations of different distilleries
to produce the same overall effect.
And when you go into a blending lab
and you get that explained to you by a blender,
you kind of, your head kind of explodes.
How do you keep all this information,
you know, within your brain?
How do you learn all of that?
How do you know that this whisky and this whisky
and this whisky, when combined, will give that result?
I mean, that's just mental.
- I hesitate to compare it with
a box of Kellogg's Cornflakes,
but when you buy a box of Kellogg's Cornflakes,
you want it to be exactly like the
last box of Kellogg's Cornflakes you bought,
and you want the one after that to be the same again.
So you want your bottle of Bells or Dewars or Walker,
or whatever it may be, to be consistent
to what you as a drinker have come to accept.
- What I've got for you, David, is really the process
from new make spirit.
Because my job begins right back at the distillery stage
where we look at the quality of the spirit
before it goes into cask.
Then we move on to the cask types
and the importance of the flavour that develops
during that important time period during the whisky,
and then how we bring all these complex flavours together
to produce the same flavour of blend time in, time out.
- Had you not have had blenders,
you would have had a fairly rustic,
cottage industry which would probably have never got
to the stage it was, because a lot of the products
that were being made in the 19th and early 20th century
were very difficult for people to drink.
Blenders sort of democratised whisky by making it
more accessible from a flavour point of view.
- [Host] How many whiskies would be involved in each blend?
- Well, it can vary actually,
because for our blends we have core whiskies that we use
each and every time we put the blend together.
Then there are other whiskies that
we put into flavour categories,
and we can pick within those flavour categories,
perhaps one or several within those.
That's why it can vary from blend to blend,
but ultimately, the flavour of the whisky must be the same,
every bottle we put out.
- That must be really difficult to sustain.
- That's part of the training
and the experience. - That's the challenge.
- [Kirsteen] Yes.
- I am astounded by the fact that 90%
of all Scotch exports are blends.
- Absolutely.
- I seriously am.
I mean, 90%, all over, at home and abroad.
- The numbers are huge, and personally speaking, for me,
within Edrington and our blends, I'm responsible for over
50 million bottles, so yeah,
it's huge numbers we're talking.
- Wow.
- I'm a massive blended whisky fan.
I just think that, going forward,
blended whisky is going to have to keep up
with the expectations that consumers have,
that are being set by other products.
It hasn't quite caught up yet,
but from a production perspective it's so enormously
creative that it absolutely will do,
it's just waiting for people to sort of do it.
- [Host] While Kirsteen guided me through
some of the whiskies which go into her blends,
the full list remained tantalisingly confidential.
- So that's us covered five new make spirits,
everything from a light grain
through to heavily peated malt.
- Those are your basic ingredients.
- These are some of the basic ingredients.
- Some of them?
Oh there are much more?
- Yes, top secret.
These are the ones I'm going to share with you today.
- You're not going to show me the ultimate secret?
- Not all of them, I can't possibly.
- Oh, away you go, come on.
Your secret is safe with me, Kirsteen, honest.
I'm an incurable romantic and I like to think
that the production of whisky is an organic,
creative, mystical kind of process,
but it's got a sound base in science, hasn't it?
Especially if you're trying to achieve the consistency
of quality and flavour in a blend.
- You have to have both.
We do a lot of research,
and there is a lot of background science
into how maturation performs and that type of thing.
But ultimately, at the end of the day,
there isn't an instrument that's as sensitive
as the human nose,
so it requires us as blenders to be there
at that critical point of blending the product
to know how the flavour.
And it's a lot about how flavours combine, as well,
a machine can't tell us that.
- A master blender is the person who sort of
marries these two positions together,
and creates the whisky.
So I think master blenders are essential,
because they're sort of this meeting point,
they gather up everybody,
they gather up these opposing, sometimes opposing ideas,
that are actually part of the same process
that tend to get a bit lost,
and bring them together.
- I have always been a snob in terms of whisky,
and I've always dismissed blended whisky.
You're the first person in my life
that's convinced me otherwise.
Stop, Hayman, stop being a goddamn snob
in terms of the whisky you drink.
Thank you.
- I'm delighted you've said that.
- [Host] Across the world,
millions of us hold dear the romance that surrounds
Scotch whisky,
but as Kirsteen's work demonstrates,
this drink has long been underpinned by science.
The making of alcohol was first studied
at Edinburgh's Heriot-Watt University
during the early 1900s.
- Okay, so now for the second stage.
- [Host] I'm joining today's students in what is now known
as the International Centre For Brewing And Distilling,
or ICBD.
- Welcome, first year brewers and distillers.
This is your first kind of
congregual meeting together in one room,
and to have you make your first whisky.
We're going to do two distillations today.
We're going to be doing a stripping run,
and all we're doing in the stripping run
is stripping all the alcohol out.
So we're going to take our raw material,
our 8% ABV wash and we're going to take all the alcohol out
and turn it into yet another raw material.
Have a smell and pass it around.
It's an interesting blend of science, as well as craft,
because there are still many mysteries
in the whisky industry we don't know about.
So there's things going on in the still, chemical reactions,
interactions between different chemicals inside the still,
as well as in the maturation process in the cask.
So, I've always been a bit of a science kind of geek,
if you will.
Basically it's an interesting combination of science,
then combined with that slight element of mystery and craft,
that the whisky brings those two elements,
or many elements, together.
- [Host] So what's the end product
of all your work and your research?
- It's to increase the consistency of the product
without losing any of the romance.
We recently had a meeting of minds at Holyrood,
of all places, at the Scottish Parliament,
and the SWA, the Scotch Whisky Association,
the people who look after what is Scotch whisky.
And one of the key takeaway points that struck a chord
with me was the fact that there is an aging demographic
in the distilling industry.
Here at the ICBD we specialise in providing
the young blood for the industry.
Note that in my notebook, fill out all the relevant,
truly exciting paperwork.
It's time to make your mind up time.
I'm going to offer you,
you've got four different options.
You've got European oak,
which is going to be your sherry cask-alike.
- [Host] Just as a distiller must choose
which type of oak barrel to use for maturation,
the students are offered a selection of wood samples.
- All the exciting things that help to add the other notes
in and around the distillate,
into the distillate we're making today.
So of all of the tools in the distiller's armory,
it's the distiller's nose that is one of the most
powerful tools at their disposal.
Think about what you're actually smelling.
- [Host] Putting the new spirit into a makeshift glass
and oak barrel was left to a refined, more senior student.
(applause)
- Well, a historic moment has been had.
Thank you very much for doing the honours.
All we need to do is put this on here,
and then commence some very fiddly,
fiddlesome screwing-on techniques,
and we have our first-ever freshers' whisky.
Ready to be opened in three years and one day.
So thank you very much for coming
and spending the time with me.
And it's taken a little bit of work to kind of get
everything together all at the same time.
Thank you for sharing the experience and I hope to be around
when you guys crack her open
and we can toast the dram together.
(applause)
(slow paced music)
- I'm probably too young to remember my first whiskies,
because I think it was used for my first teeth.
- The honest answer is no, I can't.
It's lost in the mysteries of time.
- The whisky was Ballantine's.
- I was quite young,
because my dad used to make me hot toddies,
but he used make me hot toddies with Macallan whisky
'cause that was his favourite drink.
It's one of those weird things,
to me that was what whisky tasted like.
And I remember being at a friend's house
when I must have been about 11 or 12,
and her grandfather deciding that I could play
with his grandchild because my father drank good whisky.
- My first taste of whisky was with my grandmother
in Inverurie,
when she gave me a little thimbleful of Glengarry,
eight years old.
This would have been in 1977
and I was only eight years old.
- I think it must have been at New Year,
because that's the only time
we ever had whisky in the house.
And I think probably my grandfather insisted
when I was 15 or 16
that I should have a wee dram
and not be put off with a sherry.
(dramatic music)
- When my journey continues,
I'll be visiting Islay to find out
how landscape affects Scotch,
taking the water of life on Speyside,
Scotland's whisky republic,
examining the booming markets of investment and collection,
learning inside tales of wealthy connoisseurs
and revealing the marketing magic which sells Scotch,
and Scotland, to the world.
(slow paced music)
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