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Balvenie

Regional categorisation is a vexed situation in whisky: it could be a handy way of grouping distilleries collectively geographically, but it can be a tricky enterprise identifying a stylistic continuity between all the whiskies in Perthshire or Speyside.

But if you cannot claim that there is a 'Speyside style', or isolate particular qualities which make Speyside the best whisky-creating area on the mainland, how do you explain such a concentration of distilleries in the location - a portion of the Highlands which was, in the early days of whisky, a fairly remote component of the world?

David Stewart, William Grant's grandly-titled Malt Master, is content to admit ignorance on this point. 'All of the quality distilleries are right here in this central portion of Speyside,' he says. That's the mystique of Scotch, We've all got extremely-sophisticated equipment, but we can't tell what tends to make the difference'. He's quite sure what tends to make Balvenie such a substantially different dram to Glenfiddich, even although they share the identical internet site and use the same malt and water.

The character comes from the nevertheless. Glenfiddich is coal fired, Balvenie is gas fired. The shape of the stills is distinct: Balvenie has bigger stills with shorter necks and that is exactly where the flavours modify. Maybe the ten per cent of floor-malted barley assists, but I think it's the stills.'

Other influential elements consist of wonderful wood management and the use of old dunnage warehouses. 'It'i not just age thii tends to make whiiky fantastic,' says David. 'It's age and wood.' This underpins his choice to make life fascinating (or challenging) for himself by creating a Balvenie range in which each malt shows a subtly distinct wood influence.

If we had been just to age the Founder's Reserve and do it as a 12-year-old or a 15-year-old, we wouldn't see a lot distinction among them. We had to take a various route, so we created Double Wood, [exactly where the malt is aged for ten years in ex-Bourbon barrels and completed in sherry butts]. Then we started undertaking Single Barrel, and at a greater strength with no chill filtering then Port Wood and now vintage casks.'

This freedom to experiment is a single of the benefits of Grant's loved ones-owned status. 'We can do things quickly. The household is steeped in whisky, but we are encouraged to be revolutionary, we can go against the trend -with the Balvenie range, or with Black Barrel, exactly where we have been determined to make the only single grain whisky that really performs.'

If the William Grant portfolio was The Byrds, then Glenfiddich would be Roger McGuinn and Balvenie would be Gene Clark, the underrated genius. David, as Grant's master blender, is in charge of the entire range, from malts to blends to single grain and whisky liqueur, and his particular affection for Balvenie is obvious. 'I've been at Grant's for 35 years,' he says. 'It's been my only job cocktail glas