GOLDEN AGE OF WELSH WHISKY
ACCORDING to the playwright George Bernard Shaw “whisky is liquid sunshine”. If that’s the case then the sun is rising in Wales.
There might be only five whisky distilleries in Wales, but that is five more than 20 years ago and the country is at a pivotal moment for the industry.
On Monday, Penderyn opened its second distillery.
It was also the day Aber Falls released its first batch of whisky, as well as opening its visitor centre.
In Carmarthenshire, the Cole family made an award-winning – and what they call the first – rum in Wales, while their whisky matured before its first sales in 2020.
On the west coast, In The Welsh Wind has the first 100% fully Welsh whisky aging in barrels on site. It will be ready in three years.
Less than 10 miles away is Dà Mhìle – it was through the production from this distillery in 2016 that Wales could officially call itself a whisky nation again.
To use that title, under European Union legislation, a country must have at least two distilleries producing and marketing whisky to be recognised as an ‘industry’.
Now the five are ploughing forward, independently, but together to get Wales on the map and take the fight to the industries in Scotland and Ireland.
It is not known when whisky production started in Wales, but its influence has been global, with the founders of Jack Daniel’s and Evan Williams Bourbon believed to have come from Welsh stock.
Whisky made in Wales disappeared in the early 20th century.
The rise in the temperance movement and dwindling profits led to the sale of the Welsh Whisky Distillery Company, and the industry dried up.
It wasn’t until towards the turn of the millennium that the revival began... in a tin shed at the top of the Cynon Valley.
Penderyn, which takes its name from its home village, has, over the past two decades, built itself into a globally recognised brand.
The remaining four acknowledge Penderyn’s role as a trailblazer and will be happy to welcome more distilleries to the market.
Last year Neil McEvoy, a politician not afraid of a little hyperbole, said that Wales could quadruple the number of distilleries and take inspiration from Ireland, which went from four to 31 in less than a decade.
“There is no reason why Wales could not have 20 new distilleries over a five-year period,” he said.
“These would directly create 900 jobs but would provide a huge economic boost, leading to a positive knock-on effect of thousands of jobs overall. Over a 15-year period, we would be looking at a £200m boost in GVA from jobs alone.”
It might seem ambitious but the one thing – other than producing whisky – these businesses have in common is growth. Rapid growth.
On Monday, Penderyn’s north Wales distillery opens, while work is under way to restore and transform Swansea’s historic copperworks into a distillery and visitor attraction.
And last month In The Welsh Wind gained planning permission to extend the current building and construct a cask and grain store.
With the potential for new distilleries, Aber Falls’ managing director is keen to see Welsh whisky granted Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) status.
This would see Welsh distillers retain their legally protected name status in the way Welsh lamb has to come from Wales, and Caerphilly cheese must be made in that area.
He believes if it is secured, this will enable the sector to ringfence the quality and reputation of Welsh whisky as a prelude to taking on the mighty Scottish and Irish distilleries.
“Our vision is to build a Welsh whisky category and develop a brand that is globally recognised,” said James Wright, managing director of Aber Falls Distillery.
Aber Falls stands on the river fed by the famous waterfall at Abergwyngregyn on the border between Gwynedd and Conwy, and on Monday the initial batch of 2,000 bottles of its inaugural whisky hit the shelves. Orders have already been placed across Europe and the Far East.
On the same day, the distillery opened its new visitor centre, shop, and bistro.
In Ceredigion, In The Welsh Wind is a firm believer in a full grain-toglass approach to making, something they see as their unique selling point.
The business was founded by Ellen Wakelam and Alex Jungmayr when they found themselves unhappy in their then-situation and not sure of the change they wanted.
So they decided to go for a walk to have a talk and think about their future. The walk took three months, with the intrepid pair walking the Wales Coast Path and up Offa’s Dyke.
The big take-homes from the excursion were that they wanted to work together and run their own business in west Wales.
This started as a holiday business, with Alex, a trained baker, providing catering. However, in the summer of 2017 Alex found out he was gluten intolerant. Not ideal for a baker.
So, the couple, now with a twoyear-old child, sold up their kit, packed their campervan, and took to the road to complete the North Coast 500 in Scotland.
The small, independent Badachro Distillery proved to be the inspiration the pair were looking for.
The distillery, in the north west of the Scottish Highlands, with views to the west over to Skye, is inspired by the nature that surrounds it to make its gin. The pair decided that they could, and should do this in Wales.
They started in a renovated cowshed, with the plan to produce 3,000 litres of gin, a product far quicker than whisky to produce, which they would sell under their own brand.
However, a bar in Aberystwyth got in touch to get them to make a house gin. This snowballed into making custom gins for other businesses. They have now produced more than 40 different gins, many award-winning, for other companies, but last summer finally produced their own, now also award-winning.
In the background, while the gin business was building the whisky plan was bubbling away.
“If you are really into the whole process and the idea of storytelling through spirits, whisky is almost an inevitability because it’s got so much romance connected to it,” said Ellen.
Alex went and spent time at Bruichladdich Distillery on the Isle of Islay and was seduced by the idea of the terroir concept and felt it was missing from the Welsh whisky scene.
Terroir, which is more known in the wine-making industry, is a concept that believes the interaction of soil, subsoil, exposure, orientation, climate, and microclimate on the growth of the vine, and the harvest of
the grapes affects the final taste of the product.
The distillery, and Alex, believe that the grain itself and the land where it’s grown can impart flavour to the final spirit.
“So that idea has been bubbling away, pretty much since we set up the distillery,” said Ellen.
“We bit the bullet last spring and worked with a couple of local farmers to grow barley. We’ve got a field at the distillery itself and then about another 30 to 40 acres in south Ceredigion and north Pembrokeshire.
“Two farmers are working with us to grow barley, and we’ve grown four varietals, a couple that are traditional whisky varieties and a couple of other varieties so that we can experiment and make sure we’re working with the best grain available for west Wales.”
They have developed a malting process in-house, which means they do not need to send the grains to England. And the water is from a borehole on their land.
The distillery is using smaller casks and the first whisky will be ready in 2024, and people can buy 30-litre casks now, for £1,500.
A payment plan is available using direct debit.
They will look to use 200-litre casks down the line, “but we’re slightly impatient,” laughs Ellen.
Just down the road from In The Welsh Wind is the Dà Mhìle Distillery, and it subscribes and is close to the same ‘ grain-to-glass’ ethos as their neighbour.
It was their organic single-grain whisky in 2016 that bestowed the whisky nation title on Wales, while last year the distillery, near Llandysul, released a single malt.
John Savage-Onstwedder, the founder of Dà Mhìle, described the bottling of their first organic singlemalt Welsh whisky as a milestone in the distillery’s development.
“Long term we aim to become a single-estate whisky distillery, which means that the organic barley we use to distill the whisky will be grown locally,” he said.
“Then the barley will be traditionally floor-malted on the farm, we will make the mash, distill the whisky, mature, bottle, and label everything in-house on the farm.
“I have always maintained that one cannot survive down a bumpy lane in rural Ceredigion by producing mediocrity.”
John has been involved in the organic movement since the mid1970s in his native Holland. When he moved to Wales in 1981 he started Caws Teifi Cheese.
“I was aware that as yet there was no organic whisky on the market,” he said.
“In the early 1990s I thought it was time to do something about that and that it would be a great idea to have the first organic whisky of the modern era available to celebrate and commemorate the new millennium – the year 2000.
“After all, we would not just be entering a new decade or century but a new millennium, which happens only once every thousand years.
“I started researching how I could achieve this dream, and as at the time we did not have our own distillery I commissioned the renowned Springbank Distillery in Campbeltown, Scotland, to make the first batch in 1992.
“The rest is history. As it was made to celebrate the new millennium, I named it Dà Mhìle, which is Scots Gaelic for two thousand. So, when we bottled late 1999 it was the first organic single-malt whisky of the new era.”
In 2012 the Savage-Onstwedder family realised their vision and started their distillery, and within four years came the whisky that changed the nation.
“Obviously that made us feel quite special, because we knew the regulations stated that for a country to have a whisky industry there had to be more than one distillery,” said John.
“Of course, Penderyn were the trailblazers and have been going for a lot longer than Dà Mhìle, but there is plenty of room for more whisky distilleries in Wales as we are far behind Scotland, Ireland, the US and even Japan.”
In neighbouring Carmathenshire, just south of the National Botanic Garden of Wales, is the Coles distillery.
The Coles family has owned the White Hart Thatched Inn in the village of Llanddarog for almost three decades.
And Marcus Coles describes the distillery as happening organically and growing from the family brewery, which has been in existence since 1999.
It is a fully independent business, run by seven family members, across three generations.
When they decided to move into the distillery business they took a trip to Chicago to learn how to make spirits. They wanted a still that could make all spirits, so decided to build their own.
“We visited someone up in the wilds near Lampeter who made moonshine to take a look at his still, and after that we made our own 3,000-litre still,” Marcus said.
All in all the Coles invested £1.5m in building their distillery in 2017. While the whisky was put in casks, as with Aber Falls and In The Welsh Wind, the Coles family used the stills to produce vodka, gin, and the first Welsh rum.
Marcus says they made the first rum in Wales as the whole process was done in Wales, importing the molasses and yeast from the Caribbean and making the product in the country with Welsh water.
In 2020 the first batch of whisky was ready.
“Coles whisky is unique because we are a small producer and we can experiment with different mash recipes such as rye, plated malts, corn whisky and even different wooden barrels such as French oak, American oak, Chestnut wood, Madeira barrels and sherry barrels,” said Marcus.
“We plan to grow organically by releasing different styles of whisky as they mature in the barrels. As HRH Prince Charles’ favourite whisky is a peat whisky we have been keen to produce a Welsh peat whisky.
“I hope in the next few years Welsh whisky will be seen as a quality product and you will find different whiskies from different Welsh distilleries on the shelves, this will give the consumer more choice and show the world Welsh whisky is the new best whisky choice.”
Coles has a new whisky due out in the next couple of weeks, it is bottled
and ready to be labelled before hitting the shelves.
“At the moment we only have distillery tours on request but we want to start distillery tours daily as we are on a holiday and tourist route,” added Marcus.
All four distilleries described Penderyn as trailblazers and are grateful for the work they have done.
Stephen Davies, Penderyn’s chief executive, said: “We’re seeing the creation of a new premium spirits industry in Wales and we are thrilled to have been the catalyst for that.
“Clearly we hope that the new producers will live up to the world-class standard of Welsh single-malt whisky on the market today. We have met with most new Welsh and English distilleries over the last few years and we have shared our experiences with many of them.
“The five producers in Wales are in
ongoing dialogue about a number of issues and possibilities, so it’s very exciting times.”
It was in Pygmalion, perhaps George Bernard Shaw’s most famous play, that he wrote: “Happy is the man who can make a living by his hobby.”