Taking whisky back to the future By Dave Broom

“Even in my grandfather’s day we wanted to buy a distillery," says Ian Urquhart casting his eye around Benromach’s smartly painted white exterior. He’s a modest man, but the sense of pride is obvious. The family dream has been realised. Not only have they a still they can call their own, but they now have a single malt that they can call their own as well.

We all have our fantasies and that is how they remain. But suppose, just suppose, that daydream became reality. What happens when you shell out the money and get…well... a shell. Where do you start?

There are two options. You repair as much as is needed and pick things up where they were left off, or you start from scratch, start with a blank canvas, put into place all the ideas and dreams which have been gestating for generations. Gordon & MacPhail has taken that second, more difficult option.

“It was a fairly sad place,” says Ian. “Everything had to be repaired. We’d been working on the drawings for a long time before we eventually started in December 1997. There was a lot of planning, research, checking... and more.” There was the matter of the new equipment, which was also needed so that Benromach could achieve the firm’s dream.

Virtually the only items left from Benromach’s previous existence are the spirit receiver and the huge redbrick chimney, which acts as a signpost for Air Force pilots at nearby Kinloss. The new-look mill room is so airy and modern that you don’t expect it to house a 1938 Boby mill - which pre-dates the one, which was removed. The huge old mash tun has gone too, replaced with a neat little semi-lauter. There are four new wooden washbacks complete with self-draining sloped floors. New stills were commissioned, different in shape and size from those within which the old Benromach make had been created.

Unlike a classic Victorian distillery, everything is now on one level - apart from the mill it’s all contained within one room. “We planned it out in a sensible way,” explains manager Keith Cruickshank. “This way we can see everything that’s going on. It pays dividends when visitors come round. You look at their faces and see them understanding the process.”

What the 5,000 people who visit each year see is a Speyside distillery in every sense. The stills are from Rothes, the washbacks from Dufftown. Benromach may be the newest distillery in Speyside, but it is also harking back to the region’s past. I think back to that mill. It’s old, but the bearings are all new. This is a distillery, which is going back to the future, taking tradition and tweaking it subtly in an attempt to recapture a style, which has been slowly slipping away over the past 40 years.

This isn’t just picking things up where UD left them when they shut the place in 1983. Speyside, with a few notable exceptions, has shifted stylistically, more so than most regions. As Ewen Mackintosh, G&M's Quality Assurance Manager, explains, "It had to be a typical Speyside, but not the heaviest, not Mortlach. A spirit, which can be drunk young, can mature with a hint of complexity at 10 years, but which is also capable of going on for much longer. Achieving that means operating the distillery in a different way.” Deconstruct the new Benromach and you can see how peating levels have been looked at, how running long ferments has added a bit to the character. The new still design is a major driver. That wider neck on the wash still helps drive over as much flavour as possible, while the boil bulb in the spirit still encourages a certain type of reflux.

Nature too plays its part. This is a chilly place which combined with cold spring water allows spirit to be collected at no more than 17 degrees Celsius even at the hottest time of the year.

It is all about attention to detail - mapping out in the mind what you want your whisky to be and then fitting every component into place. Take the wood for example. The warehouses (one of which has been custom built in order to replicate the conditions of the traditional dunnage building which sits alongside) contain a mix of woods: refill hoggies and butts, as well as designer butts made to the firm’s specifications in Jerez.

“We’re using American oak for these, as well as specifying the thickness of stave and length of the cask.” says Ian. “We need that thicker stave if we’re maturing for a long time and we’ve found American oak is better suited for extended maturation. It’s less intense.”

For all that, as Ewen says: “You can't magic flavour into the cask. You have to have it to begin with.” He brings out a 1954 Strathisla. “Look at it!” he enthuses. “This has survived 49 years in cask! The new make and the cask have worked together. Our job is knowing how to balance them; knowing what a cask will do over that length of time. This isn’t chance. Mr George filled that cask specifically for this purpose.”

Taste that remarkable dram alongside other venerable Speysides you can begin to see what the aim for Benromach is. There’s a subtle phenolic undertow to them, an almost oily richness and depth, which many of the same distilleries now appear to have lost. “There’s little doubt that the new make in those days was substantially different,” says Ewen. “It’s that style we wanted to have in Benromach new make.”

It doesn’t stop there. Benromach’s small size allows the firm to carry out any number of investigations. While the standard peating level is between 8 and 10ppm, some very lightly peated and heavily peated malt have also been used. There have been runs using 100% Golden Promise and production of certified organic spirit, the first two batches of which are currently lying in organic casks.

I come away thinking that Benromach has finally given the team a chance to not only answer many questions which have been nagging away for many years but to take its rightful place at the distiller’s table. “We’ve asked these questions for a long time,” says Ian. “Now we can answer them ourselves and perhaps challenge perceived wisdom. There’s no point in sitting in the safe seat. We want to push things a bit.”