Meet Waterford Distillery at Maltstock

Waterford’s own Ian O’Brien, who very graciously presented this great Irish whisky a couple of times now for our guests, will be present this year too! Your chance to meet with this great character, ask all about Waterford and share a relaxed dram! There are still tickets available for those who aren’t coming yet! www.maltstock.com/shop

We think Waterford Distillery is a specially relaxed distillery! Young at heart, combining old and new. Find out more below about what makes this whisky special and experience this during the Masterclass or Drink with… Ian session!

Bob, Klaas, Stan & Teun

Ian O’Brien

Where does the natural flavour of single malt whisky come from?

From barley, of course. From its ingredient. Otherwise why drink whisky over, say, rum, from sugar cane, Cognac, from grapes, Calvados, from apples?

It is barley which imbues single malt with its singular complexity — with, astonishingly, over 2,000 individual flavour compounds.

But we believe there is more to it than that. There has to be, otherwise whisky would be easy. So barley — sure — but where was that barley grown? How was that barley grown? Is it a modern variety, or a more flavourful, if challenging to grow, heritage variety?

Then there is the matter of the care with which one’s ingredient is looked after through the malthouse and distillery. Not just in the eye-catching, brochure-friendly gleaming copper stills and cool, dusky cask warehouses, but in the more-important stages, when the flavours of one’s barley is truly unlocked. The milling and mashing to create one’s wort. Most importantly of all, the fermentation, where one’s palette of flavours is established.

Whisky for the curious drinker

 We are on a quest to unearth whisky’s most natural flavours. We are curious drinkers at heart; curious about every stage of whisky’s journey from barleyfield to bottle; curious to discover how much more flavour can be coaxed at each individual step.

Above all, we are interested in sharing our findings with other curious drinkers. Traceability. Transparency. Everything laid open for discussion and discovery. Which is why you’re reading this. A true whisky nerd’s guide to natural flavour.

107 Single Farm Origins

 For a long time, until it was conclusively proven, there were many who believed that terroir — the three dimensional effect of land, soil and microclimate, so fundamental to the world’s great wines — could not apply to whisky.

But barley is a plant, like any other. Nourished by the soils it grows in, the aspect of its land, the weather patterns to which it is subject. And its flavours deviate from those of the same barley planted elsewhere accordingly.

These differences are not subtle. One simply has to look at photographs taken in the extreme coastal barleyfields of Hook Head, and the lush, raised, inland barleyfields of Ballymorgan — photographs taken on the same day — to appreciate just how different barley, even the same variety of barley, planted in the same week and in the same county, can be.

Local barley

Which is why we choose to work with 107 individual Irish Single Farms, separately harvesting, storing, malting, fermenting, distilling and maturing their barley. Effectively creating 107 individual Waterford Single Malt Whiskies.

Ireland is perfectly suited to growing barley, and we believe the barley grown in south-east Ireland is the best in the world. Which is why we choose to distil here — it makes sense — go where the best ingredients are. We want total provenance and traceability; our bottles read ‘Irish Single Malt Whisky’ and we believe that our barley should be Irish, not imported in bulk from abroad in a bad harvest.

The old ways

But we have found that the character of barley can be further ameliorated by how it is grown. Which is why we have cultivated our Arcadian Barley series, revelling in the intensity to be found when returning to the old ways.

Organic farming. Eschewing liquid fertilisers, chemical treatments? Sure — we take all we can get. In fact we distil more Organic whisky than anyone else on the planet. Biodynamics, that iconoclastic series of esoteric preparations now championed by the world’s greatest winemakers? Yes, that too. All of Ireland’s biodynamic barley goes through our stills … and our blind sensory analysis has proven it to be more intense in flavour than conventionally-grown.

In the words of our Terroir Specialist, Angelita: “Biodynamic spirit seems to have much more depth of flavour going on – that’s what everyone keeps saying on the panel. There’s a lot of complexity. It’s almost like the attributes are speaking much louder. So a conventional farm on the very same soil, on the range of zero to fifteen on our sensory analysis scale, might have a score of seven for floral notes, maybe organic will fetch a nine, but the biodynamic would get an eleven. So it seems to be a stronger note than in the conventional.”

As for Heritage varieties, grains lost to time and the Irish landscape, we’ve worked with the Irish Department of Agriculture, Food & the Marine to revive several of them. Beginning life as mere 50 gram packets in a seed bank, we’ve upscaled them to enough to sow a farm with, and distil at a commercial level. Lost flavours, born again. A taste of real rarity.

Ultimate flavour extraction

Every farm, every harvest, sends its barley to the purpose-built, state-of-the-art facility that we call the Cathedral of Barley. Our terroir enabler. It is a huge logistical undertaking. 36 bays, each holding 100 tonnes of green barley. Without the Cathedral we couldn’t possibly treat every farm separately. Terroir and traceability would be gone.

Once malted to precise, individual specifications, the barley arrives at our distillery, The Facilitator, to be processed through our Technological Trinity, unique in the distilling world. The hydromill, for anaerobic, underwater milling, preventing oxidation of the grist, preserving the purity of the barley’s flavour. The incremental mash converter, for optimised enzyme activity; precision of flavour in the conversion of starch to sugar. Finally the mash filter system; 54 in-line pneumatic presses which remove draff entirely, allowing the purest, clearest wort — total terroir extraction.

Week-long fermentations

Fermentation — now this is where the creation of real intensity of flavour comes in. Rather than a rushed, get-the-job-done, maximum output, short 50-hour-job approach, we’re talking a long, 120+ hour fermentation which, crucially, takes place in precisely temperature-controlled conditions between 30-32 degrees C. More sustained and consistent yeast activity, and the promotion of a flavour-enrichening secondary malolactic fermentation. More flavour compounds unlocked.

Low-and-slow distillation

Distillation may not be where flavours are created — that’s fermentation, and the barley itself — but it is where flavours can refined and full-bodied uncutousness of spirit is established. The former, by restricting oneself to the most miserly of middle cuts — we take a ‘floating’ 10% middle cut, unique to each Single Farm Origin, forgoing a potential 60,000 litres of spirit annually. The latter by running the stills at a low-and-slow trickle — 400 litres per hour, as opposed to the more standard 1,500. More rectification, more purity and gravitas, more weight, more flavour.

Good wood

Similarly, the wood most certainly does not ‘make’ the whisky — or what would be the point of all that effort before filling casks — but anything less than the most considered wood policy can certainly break it. All of our Single Farm Origins go into the same portfolio of good wood to be matured in the maritime conditions of our Ballygarran warehouses — a whopping third of our total production expense.

First fill and Virgin American oak for aromatic lactones; vanillas, creams, caramels, Premium French Oak and VDNs for depth and gravitas; spices, dark fruits, texture. But despite the expense, merely a supporting act to the dominant Waterford character of bakery-fresh bread and, most importantly of all, the individual flavours of the barley’s terroir.

Natural whisky

It ought to go without saying that the likes of chill-filtration, artificial colouring and other additives are absolute no-nos.

All are bottled at a strength of 50%, preserving the oils and structure, and every bottle comes with its own unique TÉIROIR code, verifying every detail of the whisky’s production — integrity and traceability baked in — so you don’t have to take our word for it.

An ongoing quest… an invitation to the curious

This really only scratches the surface of what we do at Waterford. We could go on to tell you about the vintage effect we are seeing in the barley from individual farms. About Cuvées, where individual farms are layered, after maturation, by Head Distiller Ned to create ultimate complexity and profundity. About cutting Irish peat — the first used to kiln Irish malt in generations. About crossing barley varieties to create our own, engineered for flavour over efficiency or yield.

There’s so much to share, and you can find most of it on our website. After all, the curious modern whisky drinker knows that one email, even a wordy one like this, could never fully sum up the whole of whisky’s complex parts.

So this is our invitation. To the curious whisky drinker. To the drinker who believes there is more to whisky than copper and oak. Waterford Whisky is on a quest to unearth whisky’s most natural flavours. We hope you’re curious enough to join us.

Tickets

Get relaxed while you can!!  Tickets are available from:

www.maltstock.com/shop

Looking forward to meeting you all!