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TEANINICH
Region: Northern Highlands
Owner: Diageo
Founded: 1817
You want grass? Well, you’ve come to the right distillery. Teaninich proves that the whole idea of a regional style is an oversimplification of the Scottish whisky map. Grassy spirit is often synonymous with the Speyside region but here you have a Highland distillery that out grasses most Speyside distilleries and whilst we are on the subject of region style, I have often associated a minerality or granity character with a number of Highland whiskies, but then you have Glentauchers which is has a serious intensity of mineral character and that is a Speyside distillery.
The distillery itself isn’t what you would call a looker, in fact it resembles a 1970’s industrial unit, which isn’t surprising given the fact that it had a major upgrade in the 1970’s and was at one point, one of the largest working distilleries in Scotland, so it’s probably fair to described its appearance as functional!
Originally constructed with one pair of still, the distillery has continuously been tinkered with over the years. Those stills were replaced with larger ones in 1946 after the distillery had been closed for seven years due to barley shortages. Another pair of stills were installed in 1962, but it was in 1970 that it had a major upgrade. The then owners, Distillers Company Ltd (DCL), built a new still room with six brand new stills, this was known as the A side, with the old still room known as the B side. Both sides were run in tandem until 1984 when the old B side was mothballed, the A side followed suit a year later as the whisky crisis took hold.
The A side began production again in 1991 but no spirit flowed again from the old B side, and it was decommissioned in 1999. However, that wasn’t then end of the tinkering as a further six stills were added to the distillery in 2014, I don’t believe that they have named this new still room the C side, but it would be in keeping with the historical nomenclature.
In my experience, Teaninich hasn’t always been a grassy spirit. Pre 2000 spirit appears to be quite dense, oily and barley’d which is probably the result of a moderate 75 hour fermentation to develop the cereal character and distillation in fairly large stills featuring boil balls and shell and tube condensers to encourage reflux and a slight oiliness. Now, many distilleries when they add new pieces of kit say that they attempt to replicate the pieces of equipment they are replacing or adding to in order to keep the style of the spirit as similar as possible. There are countless tails of distillery managers replicating dinks and dings in their stills in order to achieve this, but sometimes the addition of a new piece of equipment will fundamentally alter the character of a distilleries whisky.
In 2000 the current owners Diageo decided to replace the mash tun with a mash filter. These filters are commonplace in the brewing industry but at the time of writing, Teaninich is the only distillery in Scotland to use one. The barley is finely ground into flour with the husk removed before being mixed with hot water, the mash is then squeezed between twenty-four cloth plates and produces an ultra-clear wort. Now, I am not a scientist or a master distiller, but as there is a clear difference between pre and post 2000 spirit, which not being a detective either, I can only assume is due to this ultra clear wort. Obviously, the clarity of the wort is the key to this new, grassy style of spirit and this ultra clear wort lays the basis for the development of the grassy ester, which I believe is the alcohol hexyl 2-methyl propanoate because, with all the rest of the production being the same then this must be the reason.
A number of reviewers will often bemoan a distillery for any character change in its spirit and I have been guilty of that from time to time, Scapa being one such moaning point, but here I’m fairly nonplussed about it. I like the old style Teaninich but equally I like the new style. I think it’ll be interesting to see how this new style spirit matures and obviously there is some of this new style spirit with a bit of age in Teanninich’s warehouse, so far it is only young spirit that has found its way on to the market and by and large those independent bottlings have been pretty consistent, the only word of warning is that like many distilleries young spirit it can have its shortcomings.
(Image Copyright James Mortimer Photography)
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