TOP OF THE CLASS
A new diploma aims to satisfy our thirst for whisky knowledge
A new diploma in whisky can help satiate your thirst for knowledge
Do you know your wash backs from your under backs? Or your flours from your grists and your husks? Or the difference between a lauter tun and a semi-lauter tun? If the answer is no but you wish it was yes, you might be interested to hear that a newly created diploma in single malt whisky could help fill in the gaps in your knowledge.
The new diploma, which is accredited by the Scottish Qualifications Authority, is being offered by the Edinburgh Whisky Academy. It’s a two-day course (which it is hoped will be held once a month), led by Vic Cameron, an industry expert who worked in production with Diageo for 23 years, and will be run from Arniston House, just to the south of Edinburgh, near Gorebridge. It has had an enthusiastic response and there are already plans to launch two further diplomas, on blended whisky and the art of tasting whisky.
The course is aimed at whisky enthusiasts – people who perhaps have been to countless distilleries and read lots of books on the subject but still feel they haven’t learned all there is to know about it. Industry employees, such as brand managers and brand ambassadors, are also expected to benefit from it. The course is not owned or led by a brand, so unlike many other whisky education programmes, it is not a thinly disguised advert for a particular company’s products.
My enthusiasm for the course comes not just from the fact that I was commissioned to write one of the modules (as were leading industry experts such as Gordon Steele, Gavin D. Smith, Dominic Roskrow and Pete Robson); I have also experienced it as a student, acting as a guinea pig on a test run during the summer. I thought I knew a lot about whisky, but I can honestly say that I was astonished by how much I learned from Vic.
Kirsty McKerrow, the founder and managing director of the Edinburgh Whisky Academy, is the driving force behind the new diploma. She had noticed that there was a significant gap in the market for those wanting to take their knowledge of whisky to the next level. Most other privately run whisky courses take very much an entry-level approach, and are usually aimed at staff in bars and restaurants whose managers hope this new-found knowledge will help to upsell whisky.
At the other end of the spectrum are the professional qualifications from the Wine and Spirits Education Trust and the Institute of Brewing and Distilling. However, those from the former are not specifically about whisky (they have a huge amount of wine content), while the latter’s are very technical and focused on production (which is what you would need if you wanted to actually get a job producing whisky at a distillery). Don’t get me wrong, qualifications from both organisations are truly world class and fulfil an important role in the industry. But they aren’t really suited to an enthusiast who is only interested in whisky and who has neither the time (months, in some cases) nor the funds required to commit to gaining these qualifications.
This is the gap the Edinburgh Whisky Academy hopes to fill. Its two-day course costs £750 (which includes VAT and the examination fee), a fair price for the amount of knowledge and expertise students will gain.
The diploma won’t enable you to turn up at a distillery and get a job in production. What it will do is deepen your knowledge of the subject, not only in areas such as the distillation process and the history of the spirit’s development, but in how to get more enjoyment out of whisky. And if nothing else, that alone surely makes it worth doing.
‘I thought I knew a lot about whisky, but I can honestly say that I was astonished by how much I learned’