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Region: Eastern Highlands
Owner: Angus Dundee Distillers
Founded: 1825
So, hand on heart, I must confess that I love Glencadam. I mean, what is not to like about their whisky? Young, it is beautifully fruity and fleshy and even with a bit of age it still retains that fruitiness, even if the oak does take some of the exuberance off the fruit character. The distillery also handles sherry rather well too.
Given the outrageous fruitiness of their new make, you would expect that the distillery uses a very long fermentation time, but in fact the fermentation time is relatively short, in being 48 to 50 hours. So, it must be down to the alchemy of the stills. They must be elegant, long necked stills.
Er, no! Well, they must have boil balls, again no! In fact, the stills are pretty short and featureless, but they do feature a lyne arm that is steeply angled (15o) upwards, which obviously promotes reflux, but one would expect that it doesn’t promote the level of reflux to produce such an estery spirit.
Therefore, I decided to approach the distillery and basically ask how their spirit is so fruity when on paper its production method would lead you to believe otherwise. My first reply was sort of what I expected, not exactly marketing speak, but the sort of basic commentary about how the fermentation created fruity esters and the distilling was slow and steady, etc, etc. This information would be all well and good if I was just some whisky neophyte, but, it didn’t really answer my question, so after a further exchange of emails I believe that I finally had my answers.
As I expected it is primarily about the yeast. Without becoming overly nerdy and boring you to death, yeast is generally categorised by its purpose, for example baker’s yeast, brewer’s year and distiller’s yeast. Obviously, all these types of yeast have different characteristics that lend themselves to their purpose. Each of these yeasts can be further broken down into different strains, for example the most common strain of distiller’s yeast is the M strain, manufactured by the Kerry Group, although there is nothing to stop distillers using a combination of different strains and types to achieve their desired wort. And this is the key to Glencadam’s character.
The distillery does indeed use a combination of yeasts, those being the Pinnacle distillers yeast G plus the Pinnacle distillers yeast MG+. The main reason for this choice of yeast strains I believe is down to temperature. All strains of yeast have to cope with a wide range of temperatures in the washback, from around 20oC to over 30oC and as you would expect the different strains of yeast can tolerate a different range of temperatures, for example the G strain is efficient up to 33oC whereas the MG+ can go all the way to 37oC.
As a rule of thumb, the fruity esters are formed at relatively low temperatures, so although a long, cool fermentation is the most ideal way to go, it is the temperature, rather than the time, in Glencadam’s opinion that is more crucial to the formation of the esters. Conversely higher temperatures will produce less esters but more higher alcohols, so by using more than one strain of yeast the distillery can find the right balance between esters and alcohol in the wort. This balance follows through to the distillation itself. I mean, it could be argued that longer necked stills which create a lot of reflux would rob the spirit of its body and so as far as the distillery are concerned their relatively small, non-descript stills are more than up to the job. Like I have said, there is more to this whisky making lark than meets the eye!
Since its purchase from Allied Distillers in 2003, the current owners Angus Dundee Distillers have concentrated most of their efforts on their distillery releases rather than selling casks to the independent’s, however it does appear from time to time in the independent’s lists and most of the time they are of the same high standard as the distillery releases, so picking up a bottle of Glencadam from any source is more often than not a win-win situation for the consumer and you can’t say that about many distilleries!
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