- yesterday
Food and drink editor Rosalind Erskine chats to chairman of InchDairnie distillery, Ian Palmer, about their newly released first single malt KinGlassie. Ian talks about the two different releases, how InchDairnie is doing things differently, future releases and why Fife should be its own whisky region.
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00:00Hello, I'm joined by Ian Parmer of Engineering Distillery in Fife. Hi Ian, how are you?
00:08Good afternoon, yes, very well, thank you. Yes, all's good here in Fife.
00:13Always good in Fife.
00:16Well, the sun is trying to break through today, so yes, it's nearly good in Fife, yes, indeed.
00:23So for anyone that doesn't already know, you guys recently launched your first ever single malt,
00:29which is, I would say King Lassie, but you would say King Lassie, and there's two different versions of it.
00:35So could you just talk us through the new releases?
00:39Yeah, so what we've released now is in fact our eight-year-old peated single malt,
00:47and we have got two versions of the same whiskey.
00:51One quite an interesting tack, which is possibly more of a traditional thing,
00:56but really what we've got is the King Lassie, which is named after the village next to the distillery.
01:03It's an eight-year-old peated malt, but this one here is actually double matured.
01:11I'll define double matured.
01:14It's actually spent five years in an ex-burbing cask, and then three years in an amontillado cask.
01:22So it's spent, it's really, it is a double maturation.
01:26And so this one here is very much a usual kind of peating level at 50 parts per million in the malted barley.
01:36So, but what we wanted to do here at Inch Tierney was to kind of broaden our flavor profile.
01:44And that's why we've taken the chance to put this into an amontillado cask.
01:51And leave it there for three years, and it's not a finish.
01:55It is actually a double maturation.
01:57And the amontillado is an interesting wine to, fortified wine to put in as a second maturation
02:06because of the flavor profile of the amontillado,
02:09which links really, really well with the peated whiskey, in my opinion,
02:14because a lot of it talks about leather and tobacco.
02:18So if you've got this picture in your mind of a peated whiskey,
02:24and you're sitting by the fireplace in a leather armchair,
02:27well, actually, this is actually something that you can take internally,
02:31as opposed to externally, because it's got that, kind of, all those different kind of flavors.
02:37And it's all about bread for flavor.
02:40And here at Inch Tierney, we don't want, like, the idea of replicating what other people have done.
02:46So the last thing we wanted was to produce another Islay malt,
02:52because there's plenty of those.
02:54And out of respect to those distillers,
02:57we've taken our own particular tack on how we produce the King Glassy.
03:02So that really is the first one into there.
03:05And it's our first single malt.
03:09Previous to this, we'd actually done our Scottish Rye whiskey.
03:14So this actually is number two on a bit of a runway of different whiskeys coming out from Inch Tierney.
03:24Inch Tierney is very much about making different whiskeys and different flavor profiles.
03:30And I think when you consider our Rye Law and this peated malt,
03:35it kind of gives you that kind of breadth of flavors that Inch Tierney will be able to produce from here.
03:41And that's all.
03:44I mean, I've visited, and I know you, I know the public can't visit,
03:47but it's like nothing you've ever really seen.
03:49You've got all your, all your processes are the same,
03:52but almost completely different to what you might see in another distillery.
03:55And that was, that was completely on purpose, wasn't it?
03:58You wanted to have something totally different.
04:00We wanted to do something to be able to produce things that are different.
04:07And we wanted to go back to the, to the core fundamentals of Scotch whiskey
04:12and not just change the flavor profile by doing an extra task or things like that.
04:18We wanted the flavors to be driven all the way back to the raw material
04:23and to be able to produce a different flavor right from the very beginning.
04:28That does mean you make a big commitment, of course,
04:30because you've committed right at the very beginning to, to make that.
04:34And a pitaed malt is a classic example of the raw material having a major influence
04:41actually on, on the finished product.
04:44But what we wanted to do at Inch Journey was in fact to keep our options open
04:48and to put in the process that allowed us to play with what we call the three M's.
04:56And our three M philosophy actually comes from the definition of Scotch whiskey.
05:00There's a line in the, in the definition that says it shall have the flavor and aroma
05:05of the materials used, the methods employed and its maturation.
05:10So the three M's, materials, method and maturation.
05:14Well, the King Glassy is, is a great example of the three M's.
05:18The materials, well, it's Fife grown barley because we're a Fife distillery.
05:24And, and, and we say that on, on, on the front of the bottle.
05:27So the barley is grown in Fife.
05:31When it's malted, it is peated, but it's peated with East Coast peat, not West Coast peat.
05:39There are essentially three places to get your peat in Scotland.
05:43Up in the North, most of that is really used for, for Highland Park.
05:48The West Coast, well, that does all the Islay peats.
05:51But the East Coast, that's where we take in our peat to, to produce the peated malt, because it's got a different flavor profile.
06:00It's, it's more smoky and less phenolic.
06:03So there's the good example of using the, the materials as a driving flavor.
06:12And then we produce our, a hammer millet.
06:16We then pass it through a mash filter.
06:18And that really is one of the big differences here at Inch Journey.
06:22The mash filter.
06:23So why do we use a mash filter?
06:25Because we could use different malts, different cereals, so that we could filter those.
06:31Because many of them are actually quite, quite difficult.
06:35And the final M is maturation.
06:37Well, here's a good example of us using an ex-bourbon cask and an amontillado.
06:43So, so the distillery is there to allow us to play these three M's and to build on each of them so that the, the raw material is then built on by how we actually distill it.
06:59And that is then built on by how we actually matured it.
07:02So we're, so it's a cumulative effect of using the three M's.
07:06And the, the mashing plant is one of our key differences, as well as the, the double, a condensers on the stills.
07:17And we tend not to like the heavier, a sulfury whiskies.
07:24We actually prefer the, the more floral whiskies.
07:27These are the, the floral flavors that come from the, from the fermentation.
07:31So by having a lot of copper contact, particularly in the condensers.
07:35That will then take away the, the sulfur compounds that tend to dampen down the, the more floral and cereal flavors.
07:45So that also works here with the, with the king glassine as well.
07:50And so as well as the double, double distilled, you've got the raw as well.
07:54So that's, that's totally different.
07:55In some respects, it's, it's, it's actually less different if there is such a thing as that, because this one here, the king glassine raw, as we call it, is in fact the, exactly the same whiskey.
08:15Produced exactly the same way, produced exactly at the same time.
08:19But this time we concentrated on not changing the final M.
08:25So this here has stayed for the full eight years in an ex-bourbon cask.
08:30And this here doesn't have the, the leather and the tobacco flavors that the Amontillado has.
08:38This one here is all really more about the spirit flavor.
08:43This actually is closer to the, to, to the whiskey as it came off the stills, because the, the maturation has less of an influence over this than in fact we had on the king glassine.
08:55But it's the same whiskey, but the flavor profile is completely different.
08:59It is to a degree narrower in terms of the, the, the, it's bred for flavor, but a lot of more of the spirit flavor comes through in, in this particular one.
09:12And I think this is something that more of your traditional, a peated whiskey drinker will be drawn to initially, whereas the, the double matured, people who may be a little bit hesitant about a peated whiskey would then be able to take a look at that one.
09:34Because peat is part of the story, it's, it's, it's not the complete story, whereas, um, you know, in, in many, uh, of your particular, your, I love whiskeys, it tends to be very forward on, on the peat.
09:49So here we've got, um, an opportunity to introduce it into, for some other people in there, to, to, to, to take a different view on it, I think.
09:57And you can't see it in bottle, but, um, it's almost like a white wine, it's so light in color, you think it could, not necessarily, if it was in a wine glass, you'd think it would, it was wine.
10:08Yes, because of, it is on an ex-bourbon cask, and I think this is where it makes quite a difference, in that one thing that we do not do, we never chill, filter our whiskeys, and we never color our whiskeys.
10:26What you get is what comes out the cask.
10:29And here you can see, when I put the two of them together here, you can see the difference in the color.
10:36Both of these are genuine colors.
10:39The only difference between the contents of these two glasses, and what came out of the barrel, is the water we've added to it, to reduce it to bottling strength.
10:49We've taken nothing away, so no chill filtration.
10:52We've added nothing, so no color.
10:55And here you can see the difference that it makes for spending time in the different casks.
11:03The raw is in an ex-bourbon cask, so it's been used for four years for producing bourbon.
11:09So the bourbon has extracted a lot of the color from the cask, whereas the Amontillado cask, although it's only spent four years in the Amontillado cask, the Amontillado cask is produced from new American oak casks.
11:27And, of course, it's been soaked in the Amontillado, so the color comes from the Amontillado wine that's remaining in the cask.
11:36And also from the new American oak that was used to construct the cask.
11:41Because these casks are built especially for us in the town of Montilla.
11:46And that's where we draw all of those Andalusian fortified wine, as I will want to call them, as opposed to the sherrys, because it's outwith the sherry zone.
11:58So, you can see that the difference in color and the flavor profile is kind of shared a little bit within the color there.
12:10And so, obviously, you've done Rhylo, you've got these, your first single malts.
12:17Are you, in the future, are you going to be looking at maybe a longer-age statement, or like you're sort of very experimental.
12:24So, what can we expect sort of coming up from this journey?
12:28There's a number of things on its way, and I think that, really, we will be producing the Inch Deerney single malt.
12:38So, the Rhylo, the Kin Glassy, and the Prinlaws collection, which I'll talk about shortly, is actually leading up towards the 12-year-old Inch Deerney single malt.
12:49Now, the 12-year-old Inch Deerney single malt is what I would call a seasonal malt, because we produce it four times a year.
12:56Spring, summer, autumn, and winter, and we produce it slightly differently in each of the seasons.
13:03And then, the idea would be that we would then bring them all together when all of the seasons are of age, and then bottle it there.
13:10So, it's got a flavor of all four different seasons.
13:14So, that's the Inch Deerney single malt.
13:16I'm afraid you're going to have to wait for that one.
13:19It'll be 2,029 before that goes out.
13:22We released the Kin Glassy at eight years old.
13:27It's a peated malt, so it can take the slightly shorter maturation period, because it's a peated malt.
13:34But we did not want to bring out a single malt that was too young.
13:40We wanted to make sure that it had all the maturation and was properly balanced.
13:46We're targeting 2,029, but if it ain't right, we ain't doing it.
13:52So, we can afford to sit back and wait for that.
13:56But in between the Kin Glassy, that's now in the market, and the Inch Deerney single malt,
14:01we will be releasing Rylaw Vintage 2.
14:07So, that's another take on the Rylaw, a slight subtle difference in that vintage,
14:14in that we are using, for the Rylaw, we use American oak, but from specific states or specific locations.
14:24So, we've got the Ozark, which is the first one, but now we've got the Appalachian oak coming into there.
14:30So, that will be released later on in this year in the UK, and it's beginning to be seeded into other markets.
14:40But when you talk about experimentation and innovation, we have got what's called the Prin Laws Collection.
14:47The Prin Laws is actually an old mill just to the north of the distillery in the small town of Lesley, just to the north of us.
14:56But it was very much a modern mill when it was built about 200 to 300 years ago.
15:03So, we've taken that idea.
15:06And what we have done is, for one week in every year, we take out a week's worth of production, and we go and do anything.
15:14So, for example, we have produced whiskey from oats, we produced it from wheat, we have produced sour mash.
15:24So, we've taken some of the pot ale from the previous distillation and put that into the mash conversion vessel.
15:31So, very much like what the Americans do with what they call sour mash.
15:35We don't have to do sour mash here in Scotland because of the acidity in the water.
15:42But we thought we would experiment with that to see what a Scottish sour mash would look like.
15:48So, we've done that.
15:49We've done six-row barley, and we've also produced whiskey using Munich malt.
15:56Now, Munich malt is something that you would use for stout in beer.
16:01And in fact, when the wort was running off the mash filter, it actually looked like a very well-known Irish beer, almost as black as that.
16:10So, that has a strong influence, actually, on the flavor in there.
16:16So, those are the types of whiskeys that we will be releasing beginning next year.
16:23And we will bring maybe one or two per year.
16:28Now, these are whiskeys that we may never produce ever again.
16:32One or two of them, we know for a fact, we'll never produce them again because of the difficulties that we experienced trying to get them made.
16:42But we worked our way through and got them made.
16:45But although, quite often, you learn more when you actually make a mess of it.
16:51And there was, and in some of these distillates, we learned a great deal of how, and that then, of course, then leads you on to the next thing, and on to the next thing, and on to the next thing.
17:03So, the Prin-Law's collection is very much somebody who's interested in, in the, not the complete extremes of Scotch whiskey, but this outer edge.
17:15If you go and do this, what does it end up like?
17:18So, with the Prin-Law's collection, we have always, always, always kept within the definition of Scotch whiskey.
17:27Now, some of the edges of Scotch whiskey, the definition, are a little bit e-wooly.
17:33So, by producing the Prin-Law's collection, we've kind of defined that edge a little bit.
17:39But they are all Scotch whiskeys produced very, very differently.
17:43And they will then be coming out, beginning as part of a program, going out for a good number of years.
17:51We're still producing things.
17:53It's happening again this year.
17:54We keep very quiet about each one before we do it.
17:58And so, we can then talk about the whiskey itself.
18:02Because quite often, we don't really know what it was going to taste like.
18:08We don't know the flavor profile often.
18:11So, we would like to be able to try it and to be able to check it out for ourselves.
18:16And then we can talk about it.
18:18But there has been some, some of the Prin-Law's collection I would like to try again.
18:23And because we've learned so much from them.
18:26But there is a limit to what we can do.
18:29Because we've got the day job to do.
18:31And you're also champion, you mentioned like Fife-grown barley, and it's on the label, you know, it's a Fife whiskey.
18:40You are part of the Lowlands, and we've spoken about this in the past.
18:43Do you still think that Fife could and should be its own defined region?
18:49Yes.
18:49Quite bluntly, yes.
18:51But let me explain the logic behind that.
18:55Fife is very easily defined.
18:59Because Fife has got water on three sides.
19:02The Firth of Te, the North Sea, and the Firth of Forth.
19:07There's a very short piece of land border.
19:11It's legally defined because it is actually a part of the local government.
19:16So, there is a red line on a map sitting on a piece of legislation.
19:22So, it's there.
19:23Fife itself has had a very long distilling history.
19:28There was a gap.
19:30And I think the gap was between 1938, I think it was, or 28, and when Daftsville opened.
19:41So, that was kind of the main.
19:42So, there was really nothing in that place.
19:46So, now we've got a big number of distilleries.
19:49So, we've got ourselves, we've got Lindor's, we've got Daft Mill, we've got, and we've got Kings Barns, and we've got Eden Mill.
19:57So, we've actually got more distilleries here in Fife than they actually have in Campbelltown.
20:03But, when you go back to, you know, why did, why is Inch Dierney in Fife, and why do we say ours is a Fife distillery, as opposed to a Lowland distillery and a Lowland whisky?
20:17People like to know where you're from.
20:21It's probably one of the first questions that you get when you meet somebody.
20:24And where are you from?
20:26Exactly the same thing to do for Scotch whisky.
20:29Well, where is it from?
20:30And I feel that, well, it's a Scotch whisky.
20:33Well, that's a bit, no, I think we need a bit more than that.
20:37Lowland, for me, is just too wishy-washy.
20:40It's everything below the Highland line, and for me, that's not specific enough.
20:47Now, here at Inch Dierney, we have a phrase that we developed when we were designing the distillery.
20:53Fife grown, Fife distilled, and Fife matured.
20:57So, all the cereal for all of our brands are exactly grown here in Fife.
21:03The rye is grown in Fife.
21:05All of the barleys are grown in Fife.
21:07The distillery is in Fife, and always, always, always, everything that we put our name to will be matured here in our warehouses here at the distillery.
21:19So, every aspect of the production process is in Fife.
21:23And I think it's not terroir, a word that has been so badly damaged by so much.
21:32It's about provenance, and it's about answering the question, where do you come from?
21:37In my view, lowland is meaningless to almost everybody who has the slightest bit of understanding of where is the lowland area.
21:48And I believe that Fife, because it's an excellent cereal growing area, so the raw material is growing here.
21:56So, why don't we recognize that and be able to put on the label Fife whisky?
22:04So, ours is a Fife, the King Glassy is a Fife single malt Scotch whisky.
22:10Now, we can do that, and we want to do that.
22:13But some places, some retail stores, for old historical reasons, like to put their whiskies into the protected geographic areas.
22:26And that then puts us in the lowland.
22:28And I don't think that's good enough.
22:31And I think that the lowland should be broken up into different areas.
22:35I know the boarders are very keen on that particular idea, but I think it simply informs the consumer, and it answers the question.
22:46Now, if you're informing the consumer, and you're telling the truth, what's wrong with that?
22:51Nothing.
22:51So, that's why we will always declare ourselves as a Fife.
22:55Whether a Fife gets the box ticked by the legislation, yes, that would be great, and we will continue to argue for that.
23:05But we will continue to labour our Scotch whisky as a Fife single malt.
23:11Well, as a Fifer, thank you very much.
23:14And it's been great talking to you, and thank you for talking us through the two new whiskies, as well as the rest of your collection.
23:22And thanks for having me a few weeks ago, when we were up at the distillery.
23:25It was lovely.
23:27It's our pleasure.
23:29And thank you for coming, and thank you for giving me the chance to talk.
23:35It's always fascinating.
23:37Thank you very much.
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