CAOL ILA COMES OUT OF THE CLOSET
Neil Wilson
visits an Islay distillery that’s making new friends.
The ferry
crossing to the ‘whisky island’ of Islay from Kennacraig on
the 27th of May did not augur well for the
forthcoming Feis Ile (Islay Festival of Malt and
Music). Dank, cold, drizzly and standing room only. And no
matter how I plan it I always seem to end up taking the same
ferry as a legion of fell runners (most of them on pushbikes)
who are less that 24 hours away from competing in the annual
Jura ‘Three Peaks’ race. Having been made to wait, the result
was that I was last on to the ferry (I decided that coming on
a motorbike this year would speed things up a bit!) I ended up
sheltering below the bridge on the top deck.
I fell into
conversation with one of the fell-runners who had never been
to Jura before. He seemed to be relishing the challenge, but I
told him in no uncertain terms that he was mad. He took a good
look around him as we sailed through the grey seas with the
wind whipping round the side of the deck. “So you’re on a
motorbike then,” he observed. “Who’s mad now?” Reluctantly I
conceded his point. Perhaps Jim McEwan’s uncanny knack of
arranging blazing sunshine for the Festival day devoted to
Bruichladdich distillery on Sunday would swing things back in
my favour.
I noticed a
familiar figure ahead of me. It was Willie Tait of Whyte &
Mackay, and we blethered about Jura distillery and whisky
matters in general. “I’m over doing an article on Caol Ila,” I
said. “Interesting,” replied Willie. “I’ve seen Lagavulin 16
year- old making $90 a bottle in the States. They can’t get
enough of it. Caol Ila could be the new Lagavulin.” And with
that interesting thought in mind, I met up with Billy
Stitchell, Caol Ila’s operations manager, the next Monday
afternoon.
Along with
Lagavulin, Caol Ila is one of two operational distilleries on
Islay owned by the giant Diageo drinks company. Two things
immediately strike anyone visiting Caol Ila: the location and
the distillery’s size. Billy has the best office of any
distillery boss in Scotland, with a view over the Sound of
Islay (or Caol Ila in Gaelic) to the brooding Paps of
Jura that glow pink and orange as the sun sets. Caol Ila may
be second in terms of potential output to Bunnahabhain, but it
seems larger in every way. Its beginnings were
far more humble, as distilling was legally commenced here in
1846 by Hector Henderson from Glasgow who has been a tenant in
Campbelton Distillery from 1835-7. He was on the lookout to
establish a distilling business of his own and the remote site
of Phort-Ruadh Mhor (Big Red Port) may well have been settled
upon for the purity of the water cascading down from Loch Nam
Bam. More likely, the then hard-pressed Islay Estate decided
it needed as much income as it could lay its hands on.
At any rate,
Henderson’s venture eventually collapsed and Caol Ila was
taken over in 1863 by the prominent Glasgow blenders and
agents Bulloch & Lade. They went on to market Caol Ila
successfully as a single malt against Mutter’s Bowmore and
Smith’s Glenlivet in the 1880s. Caol Ila was also a major
component in the bestselling B&L Gold Label blend
I mentioned
Willie Tait’s notion to Billy as we entered the Victorian
warehouse which dominates the shore site. He thought for a
moment, “Caol Ila the new Lagavulin? It should be.” The
strange thing is that this three-storey, slat-floored
warehouse has not matured Caol Ila since 1996. Now, it all
goes to Black Grange near Leven in Fife. The place is full of
Lagavulin though, and it begs that old question, does it make
a difference? Until someone has the time and money enough to
run a comparative control study to record any difference
between identical malts being matured in a number of differing
warehouse and/or geographical locations, the answer to that
question is anybody’s guess. Diageo certainly maintains that
it is what is in the bottle that counts, so it doesn’t matter
how you get there.
I like what
Billy says about Caol Ila, as he, above all, should know this
whisky. He is a fourth-generation whisky worker whose great
grandfather Duncan MacCallum left Campbeltown for the USA,
where Billy’s grandfather was born. They then came back to
Islay and both were employed at Caol Ila before his
grandfather was poached to work at Bruichladdich as a maltman
in the 1930s, when Billy’s mother was born. Billy’s other
grandfather came down from farming in Aberdeenshire to work at
Caol Ila, and after finishing National Service in 1950, his
father was also based there for a time before moving on to
Bunnahabhain. Billy started at Caol Ila in 1974 and spent a
four-year period learning all aspects of distillery work:
warehousing, tunroom, mashroom, stillhouse and so on. His
knowledge of the place and how it makes whisky is as complete
as can be.
I noted a
large segment of the head and neck of a wash still on the
floor as we entered the warehouse and wandered over to look at
it. “We use that to show how much copper is given up as the
still ages,” said Billy. I saw that a small square section has
been removed and using my thumb and forefinger I gauged the
thickness of the copper. Two to three millimetres perhaps?
“This one’s done. When new it’d be around six millimetres. An
old still could cost £20,000 to replace,” he remarked.
Copper contact
is one of the main factors that define what is known as
distillery character. In brief, spirit will come into contact
with copper as it condenses in the upper part of the still, in
the lyne arm (or lye pipe) and in the worm tub or condenser.
Caol Ila’s spirit has a peaty distillery character with around
1.9 ppm of spirit copper. (Lagavulin’s spirit copper content
is actually lower at around 1.75ppm). The general rule of
thumb is that the more copper contact you have, the lighter
the spirit you get, although the way you run the condensers or
worms, that is either hot or cold, will also affect the
outcome.
We moved up
through the warehouse floors. Around 5,500 casks are stored
here. Some sherry butts are evident, but most of the casks are
hogsheads or barrels and all are stored by the traditional
‘three high’ dunnage method. There are some oddities on the
third floor, however. I noted that some casks have ‘LP’
stencilled on the ends. “That’s the low phenol experiment that
the old Distillers Company Ltd did in the mid-1980s,” Billy
stated. “They distilled with 5-6ppm phenol malt and that’s the
result. Nowadays we use 35ppm phenols, the same as Lagavulin.
We also distil with unpeated malt purely for blended spirit
with the condensers running hot to give a lighter spirit. At
the end of it we have to flush out the entire system before
reverting to 35ppm malt.”
“So how many
are on a shift, Billy?” I asked. He raised his forefinger,
“One.” This is the moment when it hit home how efficient these
modern big Diageo plants are. “We have seven shift workers,
myself and Flora in the office, plus two guides who are hired
in the summer. That’s it.”
The structure
of Caol Ila was built in 1974 after the old distillery was
demolished. Fabricated in steel and clad largely in metal, it
is a massive workspace for a single shift worker. It also
moves. With temperatures up to 32˚C being recorded during
distillation, the structure expands and contracts enough to
make some extremely unwelcome noises, especially in the wee
small hours. There are stories of some people refusing to open
the door to the canteen when what appear to be ghostly
footsteps are heard in the empty stillhouse.
I asked Billy
about the effluent discharge that all of the Islay and Jura
distilleries are required to undertake. Under Euro law, most
of the combined effluent has to be tankered over the island to
a point above Caol Ila where it is fed into a holding tank.
From there Billy oversees the discharge of around 2.5 million
litres of effluent each week. The reasoning behind this was
that the currents in the Sound would be better at dispersing
the effluent than purely local discharge (which Laphroaig is
still able to do). So far so good, but the environmental
impact may have side effects.
For years
Lagavulin scallops have been famed for their size and
succulence and that has been put down to the distillery
discharging into Lagavulin Bay. Since discharging into the
Sound of Islay, Billy has noted an increase in activity from
basking sharks that feed on the plankton that form the basis
of the marine food chain. It seems that Lagavulin’s loss might
be Caol Ila’s gain in a few years time as the marine life in
the Sound benefits from the distilleries’ discharge.
Back in
Billy’s office I had a chance to look at the current Caol Ila
expressions. When I first visited in 1984 Caol Ila was almost
unobtainable, but the present situation reflects the
development of the malt sector since then, and the incredible
rate of growth in popularity of the Islay malts in particular.
In brief, Caol
Ila has been available as a single malt since the ‘Flora and
Fauna’ series was launched in 1992. Then came the Rare Malts
bottlings at 20 and 21 years old (distilled in 1975, at 61.18%
and 61.3% abv respectively). A rare 20 year-old was bottled
for the 150th anniversary celebrations in 1996 at
57.86% abv and the next development was to take Caol Ila out
to the market as a 12 year-old ‘Hidden Malt’ in 2002. Since
then the expressions have lost the ‘hidden’ tag and are now
available at 12, 18 and 25 years old and an un-aged cask
strength. The 25 year-old retails at around £100 and is 59.4%
abv.
I first tried
Billy’s personal favourite, the 18 year-old. It was
exceptional, with all the normal Islay attributes, but less
pungency than the Kildalton distillates. A smooth, almost
creamy texture and a long, slightly charred finish completed
the experience. The cask strength at 55% abv had some smoke
and coal tar soap on the nose, with a slightly medicinal
spirit taste accompanying a firm and smooth mouthfeel, before
a lightly charred and slightly carbolic finish. The 12
year-old had an almost fragrant nose, with a little fruit and
no smoke. The taste was sweet at the beginning, with a slight
smokiness and a trace of salt. The smoke lingered in the
finish.
I took a
little time to look out over the water to the hills beyond. It
had been, on reflection, well worth waiting 21 years to
finally savour Caol Ila at Caol Ila.
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TECHNICAL DATA
Malt spec
phenols: 35ppm
Malt storage:
250 tonnes
Mash tun: 11.5
tonnes, Lauter
Washbacks: 8
Oregon Pine, 54,000 litre charge (One mash per washback)
Yeast: Mauri
Fermentation:
Short - 80 hours, long – 120 hours
Wash stills: 3
x 35,345 litres
Spirit stills:
3 x 29,549 litres
Length of
spirit run: 2.5-3 hours
Spirit cut:
75%-65% abv
Stored
strength: 63.5% abv
Casks:
American oak, ex-bourbon, second and third refills.
Output: Up to
3.5 million litres of pure alcohol per annum. Around 2 per
cent is bottled as single malt.
Warehousing:
Fife
Blends: All
Johnnie Walker, Bells
