Review #200 – No grain, no gain, part 1. Single grain: overlooked for a reason?

For the month of September,  I’m taking a look at grain whiskies – in different shapes and sizes. And because this is review no. 200, I thought I’d treat myself with  a cask sample of a  30 yo -ish single grain. Whenever you see an age statement like that slapped on a bottle of single malt, these days chances are you’re remortgaging your house if you want to give such a bottle a place in your collection. But, by and large, the words ‘single grain’ next to a  30 yo age statement, usually means it’ll be much more affordable. Carefully avoiding the word ‘cheap’ here, as it’ll likely still be around €200/£170, but nowhere near as  insane as what single malts older than 25 years tend to go for these days.

Why is it ignored?

Why is it that single grain whiskies still seem to be the ‘ugly ducklings’ of the whisky landscape? Neither distilleries, nor bottlers – and not even many enthusiasts for that matter, seem to pay much attention to this style of whisky, despite the fact that there are some wonderful expressions available out there. As a category in its own right, it never seems to have gotten proper lift off, despite some efforts by various players on the market. It probably comes as little surprise that one of the first to put the focus of attention to single grain whiskies was Compass Box with their Hedonism expression, first released a little over 20 years ago. It was in fact the first ever whisky they released, which was quite the statement, showcasing their adventurous nature from the get go.

Between then and now, we’ve seen Grant’s releasing official bottlings of Girvan, and Diageo brought out the big guns in 2014 when releasing  Haig Club with the (probably not exactly cheap) help of a certain David Beckham, while Loch Lomond release a single grain as well (which is actually a malt whisky distilled in column stills rather than pot stills). But all of these have only seen the light of day in fairly recent times. Probably one of very few, if not the only, grain whisky brand that’s been around for ages, comes from the Moloch that is Cameronbridge in the form of Cameron Brig. Incidentally, Haig Club is a Cameronbridge product as well. While we’re namedropping, the all but 200 year old Cameronbridge distillery (established in 1826), has an annual capacity of some 110 million litres. To put that into perspective: that is roughly double the capacity of  Glenfiddich, Glenlivet and Macallan combined.

Our focus on malt whisky is furthermore confirmed by the industry itself, and of course we, as online reviewers and commentators, can be equally deemed of being guilty  from having tunnel  vison (present company included). Our main focus obviously lies on discussing malt whiskies, and that is of course absolutely valid. Ralfy, the all father of all things whiskytube, with well over a thousand reviews in over a decade, has perhaps some 50 or 60 reviews on single grain whisky. Serge, on whiskyfun, has over 20,000 whiskyreviews under his belt. Some 400 of those are dedicated to single grain whiskies. 415 in fact, which counts as a pretty decent number in its own right, but put into perspective: that’s 2% of his total whisky review count. Those media less burdened by the release of the day, tell us a similar story. There are  dozens of magazines dedicated to malt whisky, and ever so rarely they’ll publish an article about grain whisky. Even the most highly regarded whisky writers rarely give grain whisky much attention. I strongly recommend anyone to read  Dave Broom’s ‘The World Atlas of Whisky’ (regardless of this article. Just get one if you haven’t already, it’s a must read for anyone interested in whisky). Containing well over 320 pages, exactly 2 are dedicated to single grain whisky. And please don’t think of this as some form of criticism on mr. Broom (who am I to do so, after all), I simply meant it as a way of illustrating just how understated grain whisky actually is. To put things in perspective, there are of course only a handful of grain distilleries active in Scotland, so anyone who would wish to solely put the focus on grain whisky would run out of things to write or talk about sooner rather than later. But still there must be some case to be made in favour of grain whisky?!

 A (very brief) bit of history

Taking a closer look, and strolling through Scotland’s rich whisky history, the case of single grain whisky seems to be a story with quite some paradoxes to it. Despite grain whisky being one of two key elements of blended scotch whisky – the backbone on which Scotch whisky was (and still is) built, it has rarely been given much attention as a ‘category’ in its own right, as its main purpose was and is to be the bulk provider for the industry. From the early days on, the reputation of ‘Scotch’ was and is  firmly that of malt whisky (as illustrated by the stories of all those brave distillers and smugglers of illegal Highland malts), which  would bring you the true character of whisky.

Indeed, the general consensus was that quality whisky came from pot still distilled spirit,  from  either the Highlands (including Speyside), Islay or Campbeltown, in contrast to the bland,  bulk product of any other grain distillate running from the many column stills in the Lowlands. The status of grain spirit in those pioneering years wasn’t helped much by the fact that a great deal of the spirit was destined to end up south of the border to be made into gin in England, although throughout the 19th century increasing amounts were also purchased by blenders like Dewar’s, Buchanan’s, Usher and a certain company called Walker & Sons.

Towards the end of the 19th   century, as Scotch started to conquer the world, cheap grain whisky flooded the market, much to the despair of the malt distilleries who couldn’t compete with the dirt cheap prices of grain, and as there was little to no legal description of what qualified as scotch whisky, it was pretty much anyone’s game. To make matters worse, a lot of even cheaper, mainly German, spirits were imported by ‘entrepreneurs’ who fancied their piece of the pie, shamelessly putting bottles of ‘Scotch’ whisky on the market. (Feel free to make the logical association with what’s been happening to a lot of ‘Japanese’ whiskies in recent years, btw. On a  side note, if you want to take a deep dive into the much confusing and tangling world of Japanese whisky to help you get a better understanding of what’s what, I can only recommend catching up on some Kanpai Planet video’s from Mac ).

But back to Scotland  The almost inevitable dispute between malt distilleries and grain distilleries got so ugly that by the turn of the 20th Century it ended in court as malt distilleries tried to ban who they saw as their competitors from calling their product ‘whisky’, claiming the mass produced grain whiskies were not ‘proper Scotch whisky’. They argued that grain whisky companies  were releasing products  of  far inferior quality and were therefore threatening the reputation of Scotch whisky. Their claim was dismissed in court, much to the relief of blenders like Walker & Sons, but one side result of this might well have been that we saw what was probably the first ever release of a single grain whisky in 1906.  Cambus , owned by a young company called DCL, countered the claim of grain whisky being inferior by putting a single grain whisky out on the market to prove the quality of their product.

While this might have been quite the publicity stunt at the time, it clearly indicates that it’s just that: a stunt, as no one seemed to follow up on the idea of releasing single grain whisky as a category in its own right. In fairness, the concept of releasing single malt whiskies remained untouched territory as well until the 1960’ies. The reason being quite simple: distilleries first and foremost were producers of whisky, not branders or retailers. They produced for and  supplied to the companies who did own the brands. And while the world since then has firmly come to grips with the concept of a single malt whisky as a premium quality, well-crafted  alcoholic drink, the old prejudices of the cheap, mass produced and lesser quality grain whisky seems to still stand tall, even a century later.

The issue at hand: not all of it is untrue. Grain whiskies ARE cheaper and ‘easier’ to make compared to single malt whisky (and please forgive me for cutting some corners here – getting to understand how a column still works and getting good results from it, takes a lot of time and effort).  Both the base ingredients and the production method are considerably  less costly and when talking capacity and quantity, using column stills is a far more efficient way of doing things compared to expensive, time consuming, batch produced malt whisky.

So both the raw materials as the production method have a serious impact on cost. But, and probably more important, it also impacts flavour. You can’t deny the fact that whisky from  pot still distilled malted barley brings things to the table a lot of grain whisky would struggle to deliver. the bottom line is a fairly straightforward  one:  generally speaking, there are simply less flavours to be distracted from grains like wheat and maize or even rye, and due to the distillation in column stills, the new make is almost always of a ‘cleaner’ profile compared to a spirit running from a pot still. Copper pot stills are designed to give a spirit character, depth, complexity, while you might argue that column stills are meant to do exactly the opposite – hence why the second of the column stills is called ‘a rectifier’. As so often, the clue’s in the name.  So, again,  where are the redeeming features for grain whisky, if any are to be found at all?

So, why bother at all?

For starters, there‘s the not completely irrelevant matter of price. Even if they are still vastly outnumbered by the sheer endless expressions of malt whiskies, both official and independent releases of single grain whiskies are popping up on shelves of specialised retailers in recent times. I know of at least (or should I say: only) 3  official releases of 20 yo single grain whisky (alas also all of them bottled at 40% ABV and coloured), all costing around €35 or less. There is not one single malt whisky of  a similar age on this planet coming even close to competing with that price.  If anything, a bottle of these will always come in handy for that one person who will otherwise shamelessly take your bottle of 18 year old Bunnahabhain to drown it in a coke. Which brings me to the important bit. If you fancy grabbing a bottle of old, cask strength whisky, why not look at single grains? More and more independent bottlers are offering single grain whiskies with a high age stamen of 25, 30 and even 40 years, naturally presented and at cask strength for – relatively speaking- very affordable prices.

Another argument for the case of the single grain is closely related to this as well. Most, if not all grain whisky is matured in refill or first fill bourbon casks. When given enough time (and we’re talking decades here, rather than years), the marriage between the spirit and the wood can lead to absolutely stunning whiskies (whether this is the case for this particular sample I’ll be reviewing today, we’re soon to find out). To fully blossom, the ‘cleaner’ character of the spirit indeed needs more time in a cask compared to its malted barley siblings, and  here the combination of a ’quieter’ single grain spirit laid to rest in an equally quiet refill cask, allowing each other some proverbial space rather than fighting for dominance, can make for wonderfully balanced, layered and very inviting whiskies.

Let’s find out if this sample we’ve got here fits the bill…

North British single grain, 1993 vintage (The Whiskybroker – Cask2Share), 50.2% ABV, matured in ex -bourbon casks.

North British Distillery: a massive, 72 million LPA booze plant (c) Scotchwhisky.com

Nose

Ok, wow, I wasn’t expecting this! If someone was to give this to me blind, I would happily guess this could be a bourbon. The pale colour is practically the one giveaway that it’s not. Tons of vanilla, accompanied by sweet lactic notes, honey, grain and biscuit notes, with just a hint of spices and herbal elements. There is also a waxy-polish like note here, suggesting somewhat of a decent age, but that said, it doesn’t come across as something that was put to rest in an oak cask for 30 odd years. A drop of water leaves the sweetness intact, while cranking up that herbal-vegetal note.

Palate

Sweet, but also a bit prickly and peppery. A hint of leather and wax, with a rather clinging, sticky-dry mouthfeel and texture. Dry woodnotes are countered by vanilla and honey, with again that breakfast cereal note in there as well. After the added water it turns noticeably softer on the arrival, only to have that somewhat feisty peppery note manifesting itself mid palate. Luckily, the water also helped to accentuate that vegetal thing along with the waxiness.

Finish

Warm and peppery, going out on a dried wood note.

Final thoughts

 Like many single grains of a certain age, it doesn’t really  act its age. I really enjoyed my time with this cask sample (gifted to me by the proprietor of one of my go to stores, for which I’m of course very grateful) and you can’t’ argue with the ‘fun factor’ here. But if you’re looking for depth and complexity, I suggest you might want to look elsewhere. Dràm Mòr seem to have managed to ‘break the code’ with some seriously impressive single grains in recent years, and North Star have released some absolute beauties as well, and of course there is also Compass Box who have made it a bit of a mission to point out how good grain whiskies can actually be. So ‘shop around’, is probably what to take from this rather expansive piece. Next week: the devil’s grain...