The Whisky River - Macallan distillery

Alfred barnard is unusually reticent about the Macallan distillery - only seven lines. Nothing is measured and there is a very ironic sentence: "its internal arrangements are similar to the other Speyside distilleries." For what has become the Rolls Royce of malts from the whisky chateau, this is a bit disappointing. One suspects that Barnard did not enter past the distillery gates for some reason. I did get through the distillery gates. Indeed it turned out to be one of the most memorable distillery visits of my Speyside tour.

To stand on the lawn in front of Easter Elchies House is to enjoy the double thrill of history and geography. The view across the valley from the distillery is one of the most pleasing on the Spey. The Craigellachie Hotel peeks shyly from the trees away to the left and the ancient scurran-crested summit of Ben Rinnes towers over the mid-distance patchwork of fields and forests. The house itself, now a shrine to the Fine and Rare series of vintage Macallans, is the setting for events and vip and corporate entertaining. It was built in 1700 by Captain John Grant, though there would have been a house there for at least a century before that (there are records of it being plundered by a Covenanting army in the mid 17th century). The house was sold to the Seafield Esate in the 1750s and was renovated and extended (to 29 rooms) by Lord Seafield in 1857. Bythe 1960s it had once more fallen into disrepair, and it was restored to its original shape (removing the 1857 extensions) by the Board of Macallan between 1981and 1985, at a cost of £500,000.  Next to Easter Elchies House is a very old holly tree, which may be as old as the house itself. In a recent programme of woodland regeneration, 1,000 oak saplings were planted on the estate. People were given a chance to buy a package of The Macallan Woodland Estate, which was a bottle of 12 year old along with one of the saplings. Each person who bought one will have a plaque bearing their name on their tree. I have heard that Macallan have applied for permission to construct a tree house in the grounds. This will be on a scale large enough for people to conduct tastings inside, and will be a unique distillery feature. They really do care about wood as their new "story of oak" exhibition testifies. The present visitor centre, converted in 2001 from gardeners- cottages, is the starting and finishing point for most visitors. Arriving at the distillery, the road runs between fields of barley; indeed,

Macallan manage about six hundred acres of their own barley here. They do not make a great thing about the terroir concept, but from 2003 they have casked spirit made from their own barley separately, to maintain its integrity. All Macallan is stored and matured on-site, in more than 20 warehouses, including one large new store which holds as much as all the others put together and is the biggest single-roofed warehouse in Europe. It is in warehousing that most of the distillery workers are employed. The barley used in making Macallan is mostly Golden Promise (approx 70 per cent; almost the entire stock of Golden Promise in Scotland). This is not a particularly high-yielding strain, but it gives the whisky its flavour. When you consider that the distillery has an annual output of around six million litres, this is clearly not a decision driven by accountants.Every step of the process is designed to achieve the desired characteristics of Macallan new-make spirit; sweet, oily and richly robust.To achieve this output, the Macallan distillery works very hard. The mash tun converts seven tons of barley grist into 39 thousand litres of wort in three and a half hours, and it does this seven times a day, seven days a week. This, in turn, feeds into 16 stainless steel washbacks, which are atmosphere-vented, highly sterile, almost self-cleaning. During the 1980s, the company ran stainless steel and wooden washbacks together and said it could detect no appreciable difference. The distillery uses three types of fresh distillers yeast (complex fermentation leads to complex flavours), which have to be stored at below five degrees centigrade before being blended together to start the fermentation.

After 48 hours of fermentation, the wash finds its way to the still-house.

Macallan has 21 stills, though only 15 are currently in use. With 15 stills operating, condensers inside the building and the sun shining through the large glass frontage, this can be a hot environment. The stillmen prefer it in the winter, when they can look out from their pleasantly warm environment and see crisp snow lying on Ben Rinnes. The larger wash stills are heated by gas, and each one supplies low wines at 21 per cent abv for the two spirit stills. These are remarkable in their shape and size. They are the smallest stills in Speyside and are of simple, conventional design. There is nothing to encourage reflux and the spirit has an easy journey up the short necks and down the lyne arm. This makes for a fairly sinewy, robust spirit - coquettish elegance is not what Macallan are after. However, I was given some of the new-make to taste and was astonished at how sweet, fragrant and drinkable it was. Small stills probably allow more contact with copper in the way that small casks allow greater contact with wood. The stills are gas-fired and run slowly, and only about 15 per cent of the run is taken as the middle cut for filling into casks. That 15 per cent is the raw product that meets the wood for its long sleep. Macallan's wood management policy is one of the most careful and considered in the whole of Scotland. Most of the casks employed at Macallan are butts and puncheons from Spain. The company has these made in Jerez, favouring European oak, quercus robur, rather than American, quercus alba. It loans them to Gonzalez Byass for about three years, during which time they contain mostly Oloroso sherry.Then they are shipped back whole to Scotland and put to work in the distillery.Fino casks are used for the Elegenzia, and Macallan do fill (and have always filled) some American barrels and hogsheads. In 2004, Macallan rebranded their

whole range and unveiled the Fine Oak malts. This did not remove the traditional sherry-matured Macallan, but brought to the world an additional series of bourbon-matured expressions. At the moment, Macallan is the fourth best selling single malt in the world, having jumped from sixth place in recent years, and the rebranding is designed to move it up the ladder at least one more place.

Sales of The Macallan have doubled in five years; this is a malt on the move.

At the end of my tour, I was entertained with a nosing and tasting of severalfrom the range, accompanied by a PowerPoint presentation of the famous 'spider' tasting diagrams. This was a vertical tasting of great whiskies, soaring from the new-make through the 12 year old (pears and ginger), the 15 year old fine oak (toffee, rose and cinnamon), the flagship 18 year old (raisins, citrus and spice) and on into the heavens with the elegant, tingly 25 year old (dried fruit, citrus, sherbet mouth feel) and the 30 year old fine oak with its perfumed orange groves. At that point, Bob Delgarno, Macallan?s whisky maker, arrived on the scene and took me through to the adjoining room, where he and his assistant, Ian Morrison, concoct and alchemise, like wizards in some Harry Potter episode, the future expressions of The Macallan. Delgarno produced from the lowing   sleeves of his star-covered robe an interesting 1975 vintage, then three further samples that may become single cask bottlings. Flying with the experts on an unsteady broomstick, I was rocketed into the stratosphere with samples of a 40 year old, a 50 year old and finally (sworn to secrecy) an even older expression. Macallan have the most extensive portfolio of vintage expressions of the make of any distillery in Scotland. Few are privileged to do more than stare at thesebottlings. I have been so privileged and will remember the occasion for a long time, my enjoyment not particularly diminished by the nagging regret that I didn't leave my car at home.

To buy a copy of 'The Whisky River' from the publisher click here

Links

• Macallan Distillery