Assault on Scotland’s Whisky Trail

This single-minded little place rises on a hill overlooking Spey Valley. Fronting the town square are the Whisky Shop, the Whisky Trail Information Center, several whisky bars and the Whisky Museum. They say it’s “the highest town in the Highlands.”

It’s also the stepping-off point for the Whisky Trail, which meanders through 100 miles of back roads in the valley of the River Spey, 50 miles southeast of Inverness and about 150 miles north of Edinburgh.

Seven distilleries are open to visitors, offering free guided tours and an invitation to sample the honor roll of Scotch whisky: Glenlivet, Glenfarclas, Tamdhu, Glen Grant, Strathisla, Glenfiddich and Tamnavulin.

Before approaching the trail, however, it might be wise to consider what you’re on the trail of.

Single-Malt Scotch

Take a seat at a bar and order a single-malt Scotch whisky. You won’t get Chivas Regal or Johnnie Walker or Dewar’s--these are blended Scotches.

Your dram will be amber in color, like the familiar blends, but there the similarity stops. Sample several malts, perhaps tossing down a dram of your favorite blend for contrast. Then get a good night’s sleep to clear the head and the palate for an assault on the Whisky Trail.

Driving through the Spey Valley is a Highland dream. A clear, rambling stream winds between trees and over white rock. Burns and rivulets cascade from the green hills into the river. Waving fields of barley complete the fantasy. But it’s more than a dream: It’s the stuff that whisky’s made of.

Whisky comes from the Gaelic uisge beatha (water of life), and it is with water that the life of whisky begins, spring water that flows through peat and over granite.

The peat does double duty. First it flavors the water. Later, smoldering peat roasts the barley, binding the smoke into the grain.

Chinese Pagoda

Gazing at the Spey Valley’s streams and glens, you realize why each glen’s whisky is different. Like the hillsides of Bordeaux or Burgundy, each glen has its own ecology: its own barley, peat and water, each distinct from the next. Debates rage, from Inverness to Galashiels, as to which is the best. What cannot be denied is that each is special.

Now move on to one of the distilleries. They’re not hard to spot. When you see what looks like a Chinese pagoda in a valley, that’s a distillery.

The top is the chimney of the drying kiln, where the peat roasts the barley. These traditional kilns are no longer used, but the pagoda tops remain.

Glenfarclas is a good place to start. From the outside it looks like an ordinary industrial plant. In the parking lot you get your first taste of whisky-to-be: malted barley, which arrives at the distillery in trucks. It looks like raw barley grains, but tastes dry, crisp and malty.

Inside the factory, the malt goes through a barley comber, which combs out stones, roots and other impurities. The comber shakes the whole room.

Next you move to the mash room, where the ground malt surfaces in mash tuns, soaking in hot water. The mash tuns at Glenfarclas are stainless-steel barrels two stories high, their surfaces bubbling like quicksand. The liquid, or wort, is drained off, cooled and sent on to ferment. The leftover mash is used as cattle feed. Nothing goes to waste.

In the mash room, the molasses smell, which has been hovering in the air, becomes more intense. It is the smell of the wort. You can stick your finger in and taste it: warm, molasses-flavored sugar-water.

Ferments in Vats

Now you follow the wort into the wash-back room, where it ferments in vats as huge as the mash tuns, 10,000 gallons strong.

Fermentation is a noisy business: the wort froths and seethes, bubbles and squeaks, threatening to overflow the tank. Formerly the frothing was kept under control by beating it down with birch sticks; now mechanical stirrers do the job.

The result is a clear liquid known as the wash: water, yeast and about 5% alcohol. It is, essentially, ale--liquid that has been brewed but not distilled.

Now comes the heart of the matter: the pot still room. This is the workshop of the pot stills, cone-headed copper pots four times the height of a man, which, like the chimneys, are peculiar to whisky making.

A room full of pot stills looks like a high-tech kitchen designed by Dr. Seuss, so lifelike are the gleaming monsters, their anteater snouts held aloft and exhaling whisky fumes.

On one side of the room are the big wash stills where the wash is distilled to produce “low wines.” Across the room, smaller stills further refine the juice to make whisky.

You can’t see what’s happening inside the copper beasts. You don’t see muddy mash burbling away, as in the wash tuns. Nor do you hear the wheezing of the wort, as in the fermenting room.

The pot stills internalize everything, but people tend to linger in front of them because they seem lifelike and powerful.

By tracing color-coded pipes, you can follow the distilling process. Red pipes take the wash to the wash stills. From there, “low wines” travel to the smaller stills through blue pipes. Finally, a thin black pipe catches the last inhalation--the whisky itself.

But it’s not yet Scotch whisky, and it won’t be until after eight years of maturing in oaken casks. The most sought-after casks are sherry barrels that provide a softness of flavor and also produce the golden hue, from pale straw to deep amber, that characterizes the single malts.

Distilling is a time-honored art. A still man at Glenfarclas said, “We’re leery of improvements. If we change a step, we won’t know the effect for eight years.” This conservative approach explains the helter-skelter layout of whisky distilleries.

Twisting and Turning

There’s a lot of doubling back and twisting and turning. “Efficiency experts scratch their heads,” said the still man, “but if we change now, who knows what’ll happen to the whisky?”

When they get a new pot still, they hammer dents in it so it’ll be the same as the old one.

But variations exist. Glenfarclas is a modern plant, with stainless-steel wash tuns and a computer-driven nerve center. At Glenfiddich, half an hour away, the wash tuns are made of oak, and an old-fashioned chalkboard keeps track of what’s what.

Glenfiddich, however, has a more modern approach to advertising than Glenfarclas. They tout their traditional ways, probably gleaning more public relations hay than their more practical-seeming neighbors.

Glenfiddich is a beautiful place. The pagoda chimneys stand boldly against the sky, one of them atop the old malting house, which is now the tasting room, with oak-beamed ceilings and casement windows overlooking a duck pond.

A film celebrates the centenary of the distillery’s founding in 1887. You can follow the standard whisky route from water and barley to warehouse and barrel, ending at the bottling plant.

Glenfiddich is the only Highland distillery that bottles its own product (in triangular bottles, whose three sides represent barley, water and peat).

“In the hills above,” said Iris Wilson, our guide, “rises the spring of Robbie Dubh, the source of all our water. In fact, when you have your dram at the end of the tour, the water on the table will be from Robbie Dubh.”

Can any pollutants enter the stream between its source and the distillery? “No,” she says. “We own all the land between.”

Only about 5% of any distillery’s whisky is bottled as single malts. The rest is blended with other malts and grain alcohol to become blended whisky, the Scotch most familiar to the world’s palates.

In the warehouses at Glenfiddich you can see which casks will be bottled as single malt and which sold for blending: Only the single malts are aged in sherry casks; for blending whisky, plain oak will do.

Speaking of blended whisky leads from the business of whisky to the town of Dufftown, a five-minute drive from the Glenfiddich parking lot. Beyond the clock tower in the town square the road descends into a little valley where distilleries stand cheek by jowl.

Industrial Plants

Bell’s, Glendullan, Mortlach, Dufftown--these are working industrial plants, not gussied up for tourists. Their main business is to cask and ship whisky for blending and mass consumption.

Dufftown is a one-industry town, and it’s enlightening to drive through and around it. Behind the gray-stone buildings that line the town square, suburban houses stretch up the hillsides, with doghouses and gardens and children’s swings behind.

Through curtained windows you see the glow and hear the hum of color TV sets. And what is the essence that fuels this thriving town? Whisky--and those squat, gray distilleries down in the valley.

Towns and accommodations aren’t plentiful along the trail, so it might be wise to locate yourself in Grantwon-on-Spey to the west.

Try the Garth Hotel at The Square, $20 to $30 U.S. per person for bed and breakfast. Or Elgin to the north, at the Royal Hotel, Moss Street, $20-$30 B&B.; Also the Royal Hotel in Keith, near the Strathisla Distillery, $25-$40 B&B.;

More Spartan, but perfectly comfortable, is the Tannochbrae Guest House, 22 Fife St., Dufftown, $15 B&B;, with dinner added for $7.50. Bob Dryburgh served us a superb soup made from fresh pheasant. The only problem with staying in Dufftown is that there’s nothing to do at night.

It can be tough to find lunch on the trail. The Fife Arms in Dufftown’s town square is the best bet. Lavish pub lunches for $5-$8.

The Balvenie restaurant on Balvenie Street serves morning coffee, high tea and excellent dinners for $12 and up.

Craggan Mill (Grantown-on-Spey) offers an odd and delightful choice of Scottish and Italian specialties such as smoked trout followed by chicken cacciatore, $10 and up. For more information, contact British Tourist Authority, 350 S. Figueroa St., Los Angeles 90071.