Spirit of adventure
Innovation is vital to keep Scotch whisky moving forward, so William Grant deserves our admiration for its innovative new malt
It’s not often that a new whisky launch has me genuinely excited, but I find the imminent release of Ailsa Bay truly thrilling. Along a host of other significant innovations, it includes an indication of how sweet the whisky is, a customer-friendly move that I reckon will swiftly become an industry standard.
Ailsa Bay has been given an SPPM (sweet parts per million) reading in the same way that whiskies already supply a peatiness measurement. It’s the brainchild of master blender Brian Kinsman, who describes Ailsa Bay’s SPPM of 11 as the ‘perfect balance between sweet and peat’. Serious malt consumers understand what PPM means, but they’ll now know how sweet this malt is before they buy it.
Groundbreaking as this is, however, it is not the only reason this launch is significant. It is the first time whisky from Ailsa Bay, a single malt distillery built within the grounds of William Grant & Sons’ Girvan grain distillery, has ever been released. Considering the distillery is pretty large, with 24 washbacks and 16 stills producing some 12 million litres of pure alcohol per year, this is remarkable.
The distillery, which takes its name from the rocky island of Ailsa Craig just off the coast here, was actually built in 2007 to supply malt whisky for Grant’s blended portfolio. Only 4% of annual production goes towards single malt whisky, the rest being for blending; and for no more than two weeks of the year, Kinsman runs a peated distillation, with Ailsa Bay the result.
One of many Ailsa Bay innovations is that the phenol reading – of 21 PPM (parts per million) – is taken from the finished liquid, rather than from the peated barley (as is the normal practice), giving consumers a truer understanding of the liquid’s phenol content. AnCnoc pioneered this when it launched a series of peated whiskies in 2014.
Kinsman’s next innovation is to follow the Japanese method whereby the new make is blended before being matured. In other words, two different distillates are blended together before being put into casks, instead of the usual practice of blending different casks together after maturation.
Ailsa Bay is the first Scotch whisky matured with a process called ‘micro-maturation’. The vatted new-make spirit goes into relatively small Hudson Baby Bourbon casks for six to nine months. This kickstarts a more rapid and intense maturation, after which the spirit is transferred to a mix of virgin, first-fill and refill American oak casks for several years. The spirit from these three types of cask is then blended and bottled without chill filtration at 48.9% abv. Some cognac producers use this micro-maturation process but it’s t he very first of its kind in the Scotch whisky industry. It is basically a reversal of the method other distillers use, where the whisky would normally be transferred to the smaller cask as one of the final stages of the maturation process.
If all this sounds very arcane, it’s not – this is genuinely important. In an industry that is becoming more competitive, with new distilleries popping up all over Scotland, competition from Japan and elsewhere, and spirits such as rum and tequila enjoying a surge in popularity, it is very refreshing to see an established Scottish distiller do something new. In a centuries-old industry, it’s easy to resist change, but success now means staying ahead of the trends, which means experimenting. It is great to see a big player like William Grant & Sons not only incorporating new ideas, but doing so successfully.
Such innovation is a nod to Scotch whisky’s founding fathers, who were the true risk-takers of their day. While it’s hard for larger firms beholden to shareholders to match that early spirit of adventure, I hope the entrepreneurs behind the wave of fresh, smaller Scottish distilleries will start a new age of innovation.
‘It is very refreshing to see an established distiller do something new’
The ‘perfect balance between sweet and peat’: Ailsa Bay is bottled at 48.9% abv and costs around £55 for 70cl.