A note from Stewart Buchanan of BenRiach & GlenDronach

One year down…

So that’s over a year in my new role and I still love every minute!

2013 started straight away with a tasting on the 11th of January and until now I have only really been in the office for a few weeks and, on a rough count as the crow flies, I have travelled approximately 32,119 miles! At the start of the year I thought I would keep track of the number of drams I was tasting while I was on tour but as the drams moved into litres and litres moved into gallons, I’m sure you can understand I started to lose track?!

It has been a year of many firsts again and we have continued to break new ground armed with a breadth of fantastic drams from BenRiach and GlenDronach. From the 15 degrees below zero in the north of Denmark to the 36 degrees plus in the south of Taiwan, the blues bars of Chicago to the historic old town of Quebec city, the beautiful fjords of Norway to the rugged Scottish sandy beaches of St Andrews, AND LONDON!! No…London was great; I had a few fantastic nights with some cracking folk in Milroy’s of Soho, the Whisky Shop Guildford, and the Whisky Shop right behind St Paul’s cathedral. It’s exciting for me to see that the passion and enthusiasm for BenRiach and GlenDronach here in the UK is as strong as it is in the rest of the world.

There is always something that happens to me along the way! If you expose yourself to the world (and I don’t mean by wearing a kilt), the world will give you a wee nudge to remind you who is the boss. It was my last day in Taiwan and after a very late night finish in the south of the country (with the obligatory multiple gan bei’s over dinner); we had to meet the next morning in the hotel lobby at 10am. Waking bleary-eyed at 9.40 on the 20th floor I jumped in a cold shower, threw on the kilt, zipped up my case and made it to the elevator 9.55. That was good timing I thought to myself. The next minute my head spun and my feet nearly went from under me…Ooo ya!! That was a hefty spin!! Or maybe not…the lamp shades are starting to sway?? As I stood there wondering what to do and thinking others would appear from their rooms so I could follow their lead, a voice over the tannoy system informed me that we were experiencing an earthquake. Funnily enough I had gathered that! The next voice says ‘please do not use the elevator’. So I just stand there 20 floors up waiting till it stops? Yes, a full 3 minutes with a 6.3 earthquake swaying the building under my feet. Luckily I was still a bit, let’s say, fuzzy and didn’t have the energy or capacity to panic. When I saw my chance after around 30 seconds of stability, I jumped in the elevator down to the lobby, only to find an orderly queue of suited businessmen at reception casually chatting and others sipping coffee waiting to check out. All I could think at that point was; thank god I didn’t run from the elevator screaming like a banshee with my arms and kilt flailing around my head diving for the safety of the open air.
Apart from a slight delay on the high-speed train to Taipei, I flew home that night without a hitch. It was as ever a brilliant tasting tour of Taiwan and I can’t wait to get back.

Tasting single malt isn’t always as easy as it might seem, for example the GlenDronach batch 7 tasting tour of Belgium. That was some sherry marathon; 5 tastings of 8 big sherry cask strength drams with years ranging from 2002 all the way back to 1972 and strengths from high sixties to low forties. Not only taking into consideration the change of character in the whisky as it opens in the glass, you also get a tremendous change as you play with your palate going back and forth between the drams, young to old, old to young, Pedro Ximenez to Oloroso, high strength to low and back again. Due to this onslaught on your palate you need to drink around 3 litres of water to keep it clean and refreshed for the next dram, which also adds other implications I might add. As I can nose a whisky for over an hour before it passes my lips, this line up could have quite easily filled an 8 hour shift. But by letting everyone take a journey through the drams at their own pace and me filling in the details on the way, we managed to get through them in around 2.5 hours. It was a totally unique style of tasting for the attendees to experience and everyone was blown away by each and every one of the drams. Not that I’m in any way complaining but it was probably one of the hardest weeks for my palate so far…life’s hard?!

In mid-January, after the amazing response to the GlenDronach cask strength batch 1, work commenced on bringing together batch 2. Over 250 casks were sampled and the selection was narrowed down to 10 final casks that would be used to bring the perfect balance of the classic GlenDronach to the bottle; ‘A perfectly balanced sherry character. An explosion of chocolate covered raisins and zest of orange, mellowed with sweet warm oak spices. A hint of soft toffee and gentle sugared almonds’. Billy has truly worked its magic once again.

BenRiach was certainly the hit of my Chicago trip: from the crisp apple freshness of the Heart of Speyside to the earthy barley and honest peat balance of the 17 year old Septendecim, it was loved by all in every tasting I conducted. The drinker’s heaven of Binny’s store, Whisky Fest in the plush ballroom surroundings of Hyatt Hotel and my favourite: the upstairs bar of the world renowned Delilah’s on Lincoln Ave. If you ever find yourself at a loose end in Chicago, a visit to see Mike in his bar is a must. Many folk have probably tried to describe this fantastic whisky and whiskey bar but to be honest, it wouldn’t do it justice – you will just have to take a look!

The end of March brought a new distillery into the fold – Glenglassaugh! One of Scotland’s oldest distilleries, and arguably one of the most picturesque, perched on the hillside looking over the stunning Sandend beach. It’s a distillery I’ve thought of fondly over the years and have spent many an hour looking up at it as I bobbed around the bay at Sandend waiting to catch a wave and it is with great excitement I look forward to taking the whiskies out on the road.

Glenglassaugh sits perfectly in the family with its oldest casks going back to 1963 and also fantastic younger whisky in the Revival and Evolution releases. Traditional in style the whisky holds beautiful oak spices and luscious sweet apple and pear notes. There is also what I can only call a fantastic coastal note which I think defines Glenglassaugh’s unique style. In scale, it is a 5 tonne mash with 6 wash backs, one wash still and one spirit still. With everything being done in a traditional manual style it fits perfectly with Billy’s ethos in keeping our distilleries as artisan as they can possibly be. So watch this space for more developments.

My task for the summer was to sample hundreds of casks at all the distilleries so that has kept me busy! I’ve started hitting the road again so I’ll be back in a couple of months with some more stories. It’s a tough job but someone’s got to do it!

Slainte

Stewart Buchanan
Brand ambassador