hello malty musicians of montreal that's a malt mention and thank you to zaven zacharian for that
mult mention introducing because it's got an x you see so it's got to be an extras
904 extras in which eye ralphy sitting in the bothy kick back a little bit
make myself comfortable and talk to you about casks
not so much about the quality of casks and the size of casks and the different oaks that you can
get in casks and the different flavors that these quote these oaks have and exert an influence over
the contents they're maturing but specifically about the variety of previous content casks
that are now being used like never before across the scotch whiskey industry and beyond
and it used to be not that long ago back in the 1990s that you got your stock matured
single malts where casks were really never mentioned but people generally had an awareness
that if it was glenfiddich it was a next bourbon cask matured whiskey and if it was mcallen
it was the next sherry cask matured whiskey and that for certain single
malts like macallan excuse me make myself more comfortable and glenn farkles and dabber lower
and um glenn going another great example sherry casks just suited the whiskey
so they were used predominantly and you had that sherry cask's more savory influence
with some deeper wood notes complex wood notes particularly back in the age where sherry casks
were more inclined to be made from european oak cecil and lamaze and oak rather than american oak
which they are now predominantly and the reason is quite simple it's economics it's the economics
of running a business and that's the fact of it and um you have the bourbon casks well there were
generic there was there was never in the early days in the 1990s any talk about well that's a
jack daniel's casket that's a jim beam cask nobody frankly was interested you had the light-colored
whiskey and you had the dark-colored whiskey and the light-colored whiskey was for birthdays
and the dark-colored whiskey was for christmas in the new year it was all these simple times
but then glenn morning always the innovators with her 16 men obtain
now of course you call it the 16 people of team are persons of team and um they had an innovation
which really got noticed by the the industry they had this cask matured range and they were
specializing in finishing so they'd start off in bourbon casks and then they'd finish in bourbon
sherry report and i distinctly remember the twelve-year-old portwood
glenn morgie it was an excellent single malt in fact i remember just getting mildly pissed on it
at a sponsored event in glasgow at a hotel in the conference suite where a famous writer
was talking about his characters in the number one ladies detective agency series
fantastic oh what's his name something something smith i forget never mind
just look up the number one ladies detective agency books and you'll find out all about it i've
bought the books i've read the books and i love the books beautifully written very colorful read
and um we had free fiscal we know obviously we bought tickets for the event and there
was ween nibbles there and glenn martin she had sponsored this this book event because
it's a bit more up market you know so they want to be applying the um single malt stamp
of endorsement in the same way that i remember one of my first bottles of bulmore came from
um the aberdeen strathspace and real society concept for a charity fund thing
that was sponsored by mo morin as the musicians because i used to play the fiddle i don't know
if i mentioned this i used to play the fiddle in a strasby in in the folk music scene because
it was relatively easy and there's no and if you made a few mistakes nobody bothered
and i was never that interested in the in the fiddle but i could flittle along
with everybody else and we had this concert it went really well great atmospheres in aberdeen
and uh we if someone suddenly reached under the table pulled out a bottle of bulmore without oh
free whiskey and of course everybody's dropping the musical instruments violence everywhere
as they go and grab the bottle of whiskey whiskey before anybody else gets it or thinks well maybe
they don't drink whiskey so they've just left it was no point going to waste so i'll grab it
anyway enough distractions so in the early days you had the the port woods and other
other producers thought aha if they're selling it we better get some of these pork casks
so you get a few ruby colored whiskeys rose tinted whiskeys coming along
because when you particularly in red port ruby port red port in particular um
the color comes out the casks first and it comes out very quickly
and in fact the influence of the the red fruit notes that you get in port will infuse into the
whiskey quite quickly so after you've done it the real secret is to actually decant it back into
the next bourbon cask and just let it metal mellow down a little bit so if you ever come across these
finishes which are a bit too overtly finished it means that they haven't had time to settle down
and and re-racked into original casks just to round off so the presence can be
a little bit harsh and you find this increasingly particularly from more less experienced distillers
and whiskey makers you can get a real kind of secondary influence shock of these casks and also
if it's too short-term and superficial it kind of tends to be sitting up front when you first taste
the whiskey and after about 15 minutes it just seems to have disappeared and left the original
whiskey behind it because the interaction has not been comprehensive but after that there was
more experimentation with the occasional madeira cask very rarely and masala casks
and usually they'd be used but not mentioned and certainly no mention was made of say
tony port or white port and white port influences whiskeys magnificently it really does
and but they were because that was not what the industry anticipated that
the market would accept and because the industry always goes in the assumption that they've got
conservative pallets and a conservative market of people who are reluctant to explore flavors
which goodness knows that's changing it has been changing for a while and still
changing and still some they still seem to don't really quite connect with it but you had
the beginning of the arrival in the 2000s of secondary maturation some of it worked some of
it didn't the original irons for example didn't work at all they had some dreadful versions until
they completely rebooted the distillery and my goodness isn't it transformed now
it just shows you it just shows you what experience and focus can do for a distillery any
distillery understand their small mates a really really good distillery can make terrible whiskey
if they're using poor quality casks and badly made spirit
but now is the age where particularly small distilleries they realize that people are
willing to explore and nobody knows this better than broccoli when they started out and they
wandered into the warehouses when the dream team took over and they discovered oh my goodness
we don't we've got some really bad casks switched sitting it we need to get the whiskey out of them
into new casks where can we buy them they're looking around good casks expensive kind have
not relatively thin the ground but you need to have the contacts for the good ones so they were
using wine cast x wine casks and that many many wine casks are made using really good quality wood
it's not just dog oak you'll find that chestnut's used and cherry wood is used for making wine casks
and of course this is a challenge for the distillers because i'm convinced and this
is just a personal opinion that every now and again the next chestnut our next cherry cask
creeps in from the wine industry because they're not going to keep
details of what's what you know if it looks like oak hey it's okay until we are otherwise
you know a certain amount is taken in trust so a certain amount of a small amount of
whiskey out there in my opinion that's why i'm saying in my opinion cover mass here
it's actually been matured in x chestnut casks and in fact is better for it because i don't know if
you're aware in fact experienced malt mates you'll notice particularly with the big big big companies
the more the generic oak wood casks that they're using the more it comes across and
the result is that that oak thing that standard cookie cutter oak thing that quickly makes you
bored yeah you know i'm right you've experienced i've experienced it we know it's out there so
broccoli really normalized to a certain extent with the anoraks and the whiskey faithful
buyers the eccentric use of diverse wine casks bringing a whole diversity of finishes
meanwhile other distillers are looking on saying right get some tokai casks everybody's raving
about tokai see the thing is it's association if you use a chateau margo cask for your
whiskey as glenn mortons you have done people are going to say oh that's a really good wine
we better buy that whiskey because that'll be a good whiskey no no no no no it doesn't matter it
just doesn't matter what makes how good the previous content was in the cask it's how
that cask has been cared for and kept intact after it's been emptied and then transported
to scotland to be used for maturing whiskey is the cask rinsed out is it cleaned out
does a cooper knock the battle head off and give it a good scrubbing out inside
is it acidity tested because sea with wine winds 12 to 14 in hot climates in spain italy
the alcohol is quickly going to get driven out and as soon as that happens the bacteria will home
in on the sugars that were in the wine and start to feed on them creating acids which turn a cask
rancid so you need the casks ideally trans transpo transported autumn winter to spring not mid-summer
at which point they're nosed checked we're going to get eccentric results could be a
white wine cask red coin cask rosy wine cast champagne cask chateau de chem
australian wine american wine casks um what they're going to do to do to the whisky will
will the single malt signature of our distillery actually lock in and match up with our wine casks
far easier with bourbon far easier with sherry there's so much more experience with these casks
they're they're tailor made for whiskey we know that history's proven it
with with with madeira masala and malaga casks you've got that halfway house and recently i
matured a glenn i'm not matured i reviewed a glenn morgan g malaga cask and it was fascinating
brilliant whiskey no but it was just a cask curiosity that made it a really successful
event for smell and taste same with this what i've just reviewed in ralphie review 904
uh as a hundred percent madeira matured light space side stroke highland space side highland
single malt i mean i regard glenn murray as east highland but some people lump in
with space side frankly it's what you call a border it's a border style
in my opinion and it's worked beautifully well it's still a simple whiskey still definitively
a glenn murray but that mallet that madeira cask has been a good cask and it's just delivering an
honest simple simple result which is just nice and refreshing because you don't want every
whiskey every time to be a huge complicated tongue munching chore do you every now and
again we want something that's just what it is and not too expensive this is delivered and
back to wine casks in particular more and more
wine casks have been used with with scotch whiskey with variable results
wine can be quite acidic shiraz is a good example riesling for example another good example
with these casts they really need to be thoroughly rinsed out before they're used
but some distillers will just fill them to get the maximum wine influence to just and just
hopefully fingers crossed that over the years of maturation the whiskey will just assimilate
and mellow out and will be acceptable and you know they're running a business they don't have
40 hours in the day they've only got 24 hours so they've got to kind of cut a little bit of slack
um with their with their anarch mode and if the whiskey doesn't really work out well they could
always sell it to the blenders our bottle is their own blend because i'm going to make a prediction
here in the next few years you're going to see a resurgence of the integrity blended whiskey
craft blended whiskies excuse me it's my tummy time for my dinner soon
i'm kind of going on a wee bit now but i want to conclude by saying don't be afraid to buy
scotch single malt whiskeys or even blend whiskies which have been matured partly or exclusively in
wine casks sometimes often they can work if the casks have been properly prepared by experienced
industry professionals now and again you're going to get some really eccentric stuff for example
peter dead bellicon in burgundy cask's bordeaux cast you get some weird weird results
really weird you'll sip a whiskey you'll finish a whiskey of bellicon and you'll ask yourself did i
actually enjoy that or not and you're still not sure a few days later it was just an experience
but don't be afraid of them because extends the range of your of your engagement it gives
you increasing points of reference when you come to whiskey and and of course
the whiskey's industry is going further they're going into eastern europe to
hungary to ukraine for example um the industry is using casks from armenia
uh per no ricarda as far as as far as i'm aware um and russia you russia is a big winemaking country
and you increasingly have a big wine industry in canada uh because
the craft and the science of cultivating grapevines
is extending beyond the mediterranean way beyond the mediterranean and in mid-europe now
it's heading north it's heading east it's heading south you see argentina chile for example
you've got varieties of grapes growing at really quite cold climates at high
altitudes and doing really quite well in fact you've got a burgeoning wine industry
producing industry in england producing some splendid white wines and a few decent red ones
as well and even my latitude here in now you see not from from the irish sea you do have wineries
because now the science is developing strains of grape grapes that are cold tolerant
and producing a different style of wine and these can be used for whiskies too it's interesting
times be prepared to explore but beware of bad versions so do your research before you buy before
you try and just bear in mind you've watched the ralphie video just generally talking about wine
casts i mean whatever next cider casks tequila casks these all get explored and get considered
simply because there comes a point where this any distiller anywhere they just want to get
hold of a cask any cask because they need the casks and casts are getting more and
more expensive due to global demand i'm ralphie i'll leave it to that thank you for watching
i'll be back very shortly with a bit of an announcement to make so i hope you'll tune
back in um i've got some exciting news towards the end of the year which i want to share with you
um a bit of an announcement as regards ralphie's books the books i've been writing but no spoilers