Month: May 2024

#44.1 Spirited in Speyside

Catching up Kininvie

 

TL; DR: May again, which means Spirit of Speyside again! And again, we tried to bag as many distillery tours as we could. First off, the mysterious Kininvie: hidden behind their stablemate Balvenie, it’s a treasure to be found…and we’ll have a pleasant surprise too! 

In the last couple of years, the Spirit of Speyside has become one of the unmissable events for us. It’s a festival, but it doesn’t feel like one, probably because of the wide area the events are spread around: the whole of Speyside! There are so many events: fairs, walks, tastings, tours, even runs! Of course, for us it is a good opportunity to visit distilleries that are normally closed to public. In 2023 we managed to visit “a few”, this year we tried to do the same.

This year we made our long weekend a wee bit shorter: from Thursday to Sunday only, skipping the Wednesday and the Monday. It was enough, because, unlike last year, we managed to book all the distilleries we wanted to visit over 4 days! The only ones we decided to pass on were Glen Keith (the event is insanely expensive, like  north of £250… yes, it included Strathisla, which we visited twice already, but still a brainfart) and Glenglassaugh (the event was pricey, £200, but included visits at Benriach and Glendronach too, transport and lunch…not a bad deal, but still too much considering all the other visits we’d planned).

The first distillery we hit this year was Kininvie, in Dufftown. It is owned by W. M. Grants, like Glenfiddich and Balvenie. Actually, we’d already visited most of the distillery during our fantastic tour of Balvenie in 2021, with James. Mash-tun and washbacks are indeed in the same building as Balvenie’s ones, and the mill is actually the same! This time though, we will see everything about Kininvie!

  • A cryptic bus timetable…

Back to the trip, we left early in the morning, as the tour was at 11am (but also to avoid the silly Edinburgh’s rush hour traffic…silly because given the size of the city, it shouldn’t be like that). We also left a bit earlier because we’d planned to leave the van in Craigellachie, get the bus to Dufftown, walk back to Craigellachie after the tour. Everything went according to plan, except that the bus from Craigellachie to Dufftown was, like, over 20 minutes late. No problem though, we were still able to get there in time for our tour, and in the meanwhile we had time to chat to our friend Graham Fraser, who was taking the same bus to go to Glenfiddich instead. He is a fellow vPub barfly and also a “drammer around” like us, but more experienced, with over a 100 Scottish distilleries under his belt: impressive!

After checking in at the Balvenie visitor centre, we had a big surprise: Paul (who we met at Linkwood last year) has recently moved to Balvenie and Kininvie as production manager, and would give us the tour! He is a super nice guy, and thanks to his impressive career in whisky, also extremely knowledgeable, so we were super happy about that!

  • Paul gave us the tour, such a nice surprise!

The history of Kininvie is peculiar: it was built in 1990 to supply malt for blends (Grant’s and later Monkey Shoulder), instead of Glenfiddich and Balvenie, kept to be bottled as single malts. They started producing on the 4th of July of the same year, and nowadays the equipment is also used to experiment with barley and yeast strains, including running a rye campaign every year before the silent season: Paul was very excited about the freedom to experiment.

  • A happy “worker” at Balvenie malting floor.

The tour started with a visit of the Balvenie malting floor and kiln, which was under repair waiting for some replacement parts. After a walk in the kiln, we moved to the main production building with mill, mash-tuns and washbacks. On average they do up to 25 mashes per week, using 240 tons of barley. When they don’t experiment, the barley strains used at the moment are Sassie or a mix of Sassie and Diablo, which have mostly replaced Lauriet. The barley is mashed with the usual three waters at increasing temperatures (65, 75 and 85C). Fermentation takes place in one of the 10 wooden washbacks, next door to the Balvenie’s ones. They use Mauri yeast and go for either a short fermentation (60h) to get a cereal-y cloudy wort, or a long one (over 70h) to obtain a lighter and fruitier one: the one we tried was very sweet, and Teresa picked up notes of white chocolate.

  • Gianluigi feels cool because it’s his 100th distillery!!!

Finally, it’s time to visit the still room, located in a hidden (hence the name of the tour) dedicated building behind Balvenie. They have three triples of stills (with enough space for a fourth, in case of expansion), for a total of nine. Each triplet works as a unit, with one big wash still for the first distillation and two smaller spirit stills for the second one. The cut points are very variable depending on what they are producing, but usually the second distillation takes 10 hours: 1.5 to heat up, 4.5 for heads and tails and 3 for the heart run. Once at the spirit safe (the piece of equipment used to control the cut points of the distillation run), we could try some newmake spirit, at a whooping abv of 70%! A very nice touch!

  • A hidden still room…
  • …a beautiful one.

After that, we moved to one of their massive racked warehouses next door, where after a brief, nerdy chat with the warehouse manager George, we tried some drams. Kininvie releases are very rare: the only one we’d tried previously was during an online event in 2020, as part of the Belfast Whisky Week: the KVSM001, a 5yr triple distilled single malt matured in ex-bourbon casks. We had like it back then, so we were now quite excited and curious about the tasting at the distillery. We started with a “single distillery blend”, KVSB003: a vatting of single malt (matured in European oak casks) and single grain (matured in virgin American oak) produced at the same distillery, 4yr and bottled at 48.2% abv. The second one was a component of this blend, the single grain KVSG002: it is actually a rye whisky (although we think it wouldn’t comply with the American definition of “rye whiskey” because the rye part was less than 51% of the mashbill, only 1 ton malted rye vs. 8.6 ton malted barley), matured in virgin American oak, distilled in 2015 and bottled in 2019 at 47.8%. These drams were both quite interesting, but we recently find rye whisky a bit too herbaceous, particularly the ones produced in Scotland and Europe. Nonetheless, we were quite excited because the labels on the bottles provided a great deal of information, a real deal for us whisky nerds!

We really appreciate such transparency!
So many details!

We then moved to a single malt, a 23yr distilled in 1991 from a combination of hogshead and sherry butts, bottled at 42.6% (a bit weak to our palate, but nicely tropical and balanced). Finally, the gem was the cask sample: a 10-year single malt from a first refill Sherry butt at 68.4% (the cask filling strength was 70.3% abv!!!): it definitely needed water, but once it opened up it was really fantastic!

About to pour something really delicious.

And with this visit, the Spirit of Speyside festival was officially underway, starting with a bang! Like we noted last year, the staff were so happy to show us around, truly a refreshing experience, and so nice to see Paul in his new role! But it was time to move to our second whisky “adventure” of the day, so we quickly left the distillery on foot.

Stay tuned for more on this. Until then, slainte!

Kininvie Hidden Distillery Tour

Price: £60.00 pp (Spirit of Speyside 2024)

Duration: 2hr

Tasting: 5 drams, Kininvie single distillery blended KVSB003 (single grain rye whisky and single malt), single grain rye whisky KVSG002, Kininvie 23y Single malt, cask sample (ex-sherry cask, 10y) and newmake spirit (for details see the descriptions above)

Target: whisky nerds

Value for money: good

Highlights: the still room

Recommended: yes

Link: https://tickets.spiritofspeyside.com/sales/events/2024-festival/kininvie-hidden-distillery-tou

#43 Cask finish DIY

Diary of an experiment

 

TL; DR: Have you tried to finish your own whisky in a wine cask? Well, we did, and although we already knew, we could see how hard it is. While the result was not great, we definitely learned a few things. 

This post is going to be different from others, as we won’t tell you about a distillery visit, nor a trip, nor a tasting. We’ll talk about an experiment we did recently – still a journey, if you wish.

The idea came after some thoughts on whisky maturation in casks that previously held wine. It took a while to us to realise this is a controversial topic. At first, we didn’t give it much thought as it felt it was just part of the broader “wine” category (including Sherry, Port, Madeira, etc.), but then we noticed many whisky enthusiasts think wine cask maturation is a separate thing, often perceived as bad… so what’s the deal with red/white wines? We had amazing drams matured in wine casks (Arran Amarone, to name a popular one, but also a stunning Glen Garioch 19y fully matured in an ex-Bordeaux cask tried at the distillery, or the Glen Moray 10 Elgin Limited Edition, finished in ex-Chardonnay casks). Let alone the STR (shaved/toasted/re-charred) casks made popular by the late Jim Swan: some can deliver a lot of flavour in a short time, which is particulatly crucial for new distilleries. However, we also had some very “meh” wine-matured whiskies (we won’t name names here), dull at best, so we totally get the scepticism of some.

A taste of Gianluigi’s home, Gutturnio wine.

Probably our Italian upbringings sparked further curiosity on the topic, so we did a bit of research and noticed that while maturation in casks such as Amarone, Barolo and Cabernet-Sauvignon is fairly common nowadays, lesser known red wines aren’t a thing (yet). One wine in particular seems to be overlooked: Gutturnio. Typical from Piacenza’s province (Gianluigi’s hometown), it is a mix of Barbera and Bonarda grapes, and comes either fizzy or still (“superiore”). A thick red wine, that goes well with the greasy local cuisine, quality-wise you can find the cheapos from supermarkets, up to several tenths-of-euros per bottle. We wondered for a while, then, after a conversation with Woody and Megan from Woodrow’s of Edinburgh, we decided to give it a try and start an experiment.

We asked some friends about to visit us to bring over a bottle of Gutturnio, Gutturnio Zerioli Riserva (later on Gianluigi’s brother would challenge this choice as not great, but hey ho) and then we bought a 1-litre virgin oak cask (American oak, Q. alba) from Master of Malt (where it was cheaper, if you exclude some suspicious vendors on Ebay). On the 26th of August 2023 we filled the wee cask with 75cl of wine, and left it in there for a bit over 3 months.

  • A nice dram, before we destroyed it.

While the cask was seasoning hidden away in a cupboard (turning it from time to time), we chose our dram. We wanted something without much cask influence, so we aimed for second-fill (or more) ex-bourbon casks. Living in Edinburgh made things easier, as we could access the two Scotch Malt Whisky Society venues, although it wasn’t easy to find a whisky available both to try and purchase. We still managed to taste 6 or 7 bottlings from various distilleries, and the final choice fell on a 12-year-old Dufftown (distillery that we had the chance to walk past in our first trip to Speyside, but never properly visited), called Biting on a Bung (91.34), distilled on the 7th of July 2009 and bottled at 59.0% abv.

On the 5th of December, we disgorged the wine. To our surprise the cask was soaked – of the 75cl of wine we’d put in, only 35cl came out! We knew that some absorption would happen, but not to this extent!

What was left of the entire bottle!

On the same day, we filled the cask with the whisky while leaving 20cl to ourselves, in case we messed things up (spoiler alert, we did). We didn’t have a timeline in mind, we just wanted to try the whisky at different times, but here one miscalculation: we went back to Italy two weeks for Christmas, leaving it unchecked for probably too long. When we came back, we took a sample right away: a lot of colour (copper red), some typical red-wine notes on the nose (tannins and red berries), but very metallic on the palate. We hoped these metallic notes would disappear with some more time in the wood, but they didn’t, so in early March, exactly 3 months after filling the cask, we disgorged it and, again, only 30cl of whisky came out (another 20cl of liquid absorbed) – 30cl of ‘metallic liquid’, clearly not a success.

  • Filling the cask with whisky…and hope.
  • It only took three months for the colour to change!

We followed up the experiment, this time not with a proper whisky but with spirit from our infinity bottle: despite leaving it in the wee cask for only a couple of weeks, the same unpleasant notes re-appeared (although not so much absorption this time). Oh well.

So, what did we learn out of this experiment? How to waste a good half-litre of whisky? Definitely, but not only that. We already thought it must be hard to properly finish a whisky in the right cask for the right amount of time, but we were surprised by how easy it is to mess up (well, probably the small size just accelerated the process)!

  • You really don’t want to taste the end product :/ …Maybe next time is going to to be better?

We made a list of variables to consider:

  1. The cask! After so many distillery visits, we know wood quality is key (but tbh we didn’t feel like investing big for our random experiment)
  2. Time to season the cask with wine (maybe too much?)
  3. Time to finish the whisky (again, too much?)
  4. Climate conditions (our flat is very very dry, but there’s not much we can do…)
  5. Whisky robustness (maybe it was a too delicate one for this kind of experiment?)
  6. Quality of the wine…or even the type of wine?

So many variables…it’s really hard to wrap our heads around it, although we could sum up all these variables into one: experience, i.e. really knowing what you’re doing. We clearly didn’t, but thankfully this is not what we’re doing for a living. Nonetheless, it was fun! What’s next? Currently the cask is empty, but we’ll try to fill it soon to avoid it to dry too much…with, maybe, rum? Another wine? Let us know if you have any ideas!

Until next time, slainte.