Ardnamurchan Golden Promise Cask 1062

Right now it’s evening in our flat, my partner is watching Netflix while gently sipping her evening tea, and an attentive partner would be watching with her or sharing conversation about our day. I, on the other hand, am staring at my laptop pounding keys about the thing that’s in the glass in front of me, with some books about the thing opened and sprawled around me.

She looks over and seems as if she wants to ask a question, but something about the way I’m maniacally hunched over my laptop, glowing screen creepily lighting up my face from below, tapping away while sipping from my Glencairn with ten browser tabs open to whisky sites with open whisky books piled on top of one another around me. . . she turns back to her Netflix. I don’t see it, but I can feel an eye roll. I can’t blame her, to be honest. But, there’s Very Important Research to be done for you, dear Dramfacers, and so I turn back to my glowing screen and crack on. After this next sip.

While the process of making whisky is relatively straightforward, the nuances are of course wonderfully and stupendously varied which encourages all sorts of geekery. The relationship of ABV to flavour. How the angle of the lyne arm affects how the spirit is captured. How the shape of the still influences character. Whether a distillery has worm tubs or not. Steel or wooden washbacks. Cut points. How the size and fill history of a cask relates to the spirit. The location of warehouses. Age. And so on. 

Once we’ve made our way through the standard supermarket offerings and our palates begin to demand more – more substance, more interest, more flavour – we migrate to other higher strength official bottlings, the indie scene, and single cask offerings where we often find many of the most interesting permutations and experiments of our favourite distilleries. Yet producers themselves do frequently experiment. Most of these experiments are variations of cask finishes, or releasing a spirit at a different age or ABV than the standard core range. On rare occasions we even see distilleries teaming-up for a one-off experiment, such as Kilchoman and Ardnamurchan’s blending of two casks from the distilleries. Loch Lomond has been giving us some terrific experimentation with chardonnay wine yeast during their fermentation and other fantastic fun through their Distillery Edition releases.

Barley varieties are another aspect where we are starting to enjoy some experimentation and variation. Most of the industry tends to use a small handful of modern varieties, which you’ve probably heard of if you were paying attention on the distillery tour: Optic, Belgravia, Laureate, Concerto, Propino, and a few others are standards. There are good reasons why distillers use these modern varieties: they’re high-yield and therefore much better for the bottom line, they’re less susceptible to disease and bad weather than varieties of yore, and of course produce tasty spirit for us to enjoy. Unless we’re specifically told by the tour guide as we’re cautiously sniffing and sipping the rocket-fuel new-make in the still room, most of us probably cannot taste the differences between these varieties, as they are evidently very similar. 

In his wonderfully breezy and readable book MacLean’s Miscellany of Whisky, Charlie MacLean notes that the prevailing wisdom in the industry is that barley variety generally contributes little to the flavour of the final matured product (p. 124) – although, as we’ll see, not everyone agrees. It does, though, affect the yield as mentioned: the amount of alcohol that can be obtained per ton derives from the grain’s capacity to germinate and on its starch content. The variety also affects how well it mashes. 

MacLean (p. 125) discusses how the earliest kinds of “heritage” or “landrace” barley in Scotland was six-row bere: it was low-yielding but could hold up to the cold and wet climate of the Highlands. Bruichladdich, of course, continues to use this heritage variety in their very tasty Bere Barley series; you can find the hot takes of yours truly and Broddy on two different vintages in the Dramface archives.

By the 19th century farmers and distillers found out that two-row varieties were better performing in many areas. Scotch Common was one example of a two-row variety that was weak-strawed and low-yielding but had favourable mashing qualities of low dormancy (i.e., the grain is easier to coax into germination) and fast germination (i.e., more batches can be produced more quickly). By the 20th century hybrids began to be developed and by the 1940s accounted for 80% of barley grown for malting (p. 126). Dominant post-war varieties such as Maris Otter and Proctor were brought to Scotland but could not adequately survive the harsh Scottish climate, and so had to be shipped north from England but also as far as the US, Australia, and Canada.

Enter Golden Promise. Because it was expensive to ship barley from elsewhere – particularly as the demand for Scotch whisky was rising considerably by the 1960s – distillers needed a variety that could be grown in Scotland. As MacLean (p. 126) continues, Golden Promise was and is a “semi-dwarf” variety, which means a hybrid developed with modified stem height and grain weight that kept the grain from being too heavy to bend the plant and spoil on the ground. Golden Promise matured early even in cold and windy Scotland, and so became popular after it was introduced in 1966. Though, as newer hybrid varieties were developed that could yield more litres of alcohol per ton of malt, Golden Promise fell out of favour. 

While today, with Ardnamurchan, we are out on the windy west coast of Scotland on the shores of Loch Sunart, Speyside Macallan is of course well-known for using Golden Promise when other distilleries had long since converted to more efficient modern hybrids. Macallan are quite evasive on their website about barley varieties they use, amidst the limited-this and luxury-that. An old interview with then-Master Distiller David Robertson from 2002, though, sheds some light on things from that era.

Robertson declares that, at least at that time, the typical ratio of a batch was 25% Golden Promise and the rest a modern variety such as Optic or Chariot. Even composing 25% of a batch, Robertson argued that in tests they conducted “without Golden Promise the new make spirit lacked guts and oiliness. Using 25% Golden Promise is enough to get the character we want – the gutsy, oily, creaminess that we look for in new make spirit.” While it’s difficult to determine whether Macallan still adheres to this proportion, if still using Golden Promise at all, at that time Robertson at least spoke to the distinct qualities that this variety is commonly held to possess.  

So, do differences in barley strain actually make a difference to the spirit? In one of his other many books, Malt Whisky: The Complete Guide, MacLean recounts a conversation with a distillery manager who said that when distilling with a heritage variety he had to “run the foreshots for an hour and a half before spirit could start to be saved, where he would normally expect to run foreshots for only half of that time” (58). From that MacLean concludes that barley type does matter to production, although he acknowledges that the difference is tough to quantify. Other new distilleries are using hybrid and heritage varieties in their production, suggesting that they agree, or at least find the prospect of unique flavours and textures from different varieties tantalising enough that they’re experimenting. 

Holyrood Distillery manager Calum Rae, for example, recently said that they are using heritage grains because of the different flavours and textures compared to more standard varieties, and noted that they have worked with heritage varieties such as Chevallier, Golden Promise, Plumage Archer, Maris Otter, and Hana.

You get the point: there’s enough evidence and experience out there to strongly suggest that barley variety matters, perhaps even in big ways. My grainy deep dive here very much follows Dougie and Tyree’s earlier deep dive, so do have a read of their fascinating discussion on Ardnamurchan’s Golden Promise – it’s well worth your time.