DISTILLERY PROFILE

A new distillery in Perthshire plans to recreate the spirit of the 1960s, with two-week fermentations, a wood-fired wash still and worm tub condensers. Unfiltered editor Richard Goslan caught up with two out of the three co-founders, Angus MacRaild and Jonny McMillan, to find out more about Kythe distillery

ABOVE: Jonny McMillan, Aaron Chan and Angus MacRaild, c0-founders of Kythe distillery

JM: It’s much more about methodology than plant, I guess. You need key bits of plant, a direct fire still being the big one. I think worm tubs were also an obvious choice for us. When you taste the great distillates, they always have real weight to them.

AM: And then there’s also things like ingredients and the research that goes into making sure we’ve got a sustainable supply of the right type of barley. We want a heritage and brewing varietals, which essentially deliver much higher ratios of protein, for example, rather than very high starch distilling varieties, which are designed to convert into the maximum amount of sugar to get high alcohol yields. We want ones that deliver a more complex wash, which will, at the end of fermentation, be primed to distill into the type of distillate that we want with the right precursors that eventually mature into the spirit, the whisky we want. It’s about going right back to the beginning with everything and thinking about every single part of the process.

And then around fermentation, it’s looking into what yeast do we want? We want brewer’s yeast, where are we going to get that from? We need to go to a brewery. We need to think about how that yeast is taken from the brewery, how it’s transported, how it’s handled, what condition it’s in when it’s pitched, what that’s going to do to the fermentation. There’s going to be a fair amount of experimenting and playing around in our first year of production to find out what exact ratio and recipe works for us. But we’ve planned all that in, and we’ve factored all that in. I think a big part of what we bring to this is our willingness to not compromise in the areas where we can’t afford to compromise. And our judgment, we’re all very keenly aware of the benchmark we set ourselves and the yardstick of quality that we want to get past. And I think we’re all honest and pretty good at sticking our noses in a glass and saying, "Yes, that’s right," or "Yes, that’s not good enough, we need to change something." That’s very much what the first couple of years will be about.

RG: It’s about consistency, finding the spirit that you want to create, and going on to create that, right?

AM: Yeah, we want to achieve a house style that’s very distinctive, very clear, and very charismatic. I think there’s a certain tension in whisky-making, between the time at which your distillate starts to reveal its true character and how much can you rush that with things like smaller casks in the first couple of years, versus how much of that is actually revealed after three, four, five, 10 years in more standard traditional barrels and hogsheads? It’s trying, or hoping, to get to a point where you’ve got enough confidence to lock in more firmly on a particular type of recipe and a particular method. We’re not concerned that we won’t be able to create something of the beauty and quality that we’re after. I suppose our main area of focus in the early years is: what’s the exact route? What’s the route and the combination of all these different tweaks and very subtle changes that we can make that’s going to deliver the very best and the profile that we really want?

JM: I guess that there’s production parameters that we’re going to stick to, as Angus says. We need to use heritage barley. I think that a lot of flavour that we want is coming from these protein-rich barleys. But within heritage barley, there’s a huge range of things that are available in the market or things that we could grow ourselves. And then equally, we need to use brewer’s yeast. But again, there’s quite a lot of different types of brewer’s yeast, and there’s different ways you can treat it. And then fermentation time as well. There’s some anecdotal evidence of things like two-week fermentations in the ‘60s, but a lot of distillers will have used two days in the ‘60s. So I guess there’s playing about with these parameters. And we know we want to achieve this big tropical fruit, waxy character, [like a] 1969 Longmorn or ‘64 Bowmore. Then there’s also theories about how fast you run the stills or what cut points to take.

AM: When I think of what I want to have achieved with Kythe in 10 years is to create a whisky which people can guess easily. People can put their nose in a glass and go, "Oh, is that Kythe?" That, to me, is something that things like old Laphroaig possess. When you give people that know these whiskies a glass and they go, "That is old style Laphroaig, and it’s beautiful." But they are very subtly different from, dram to dram, from year to year, from cask to cask. Old style whiskies possessed a lovely undulating variation across eras, and even blocks of months of production. And I think a lot of that is because these distilleries were run much more by hand, far less by automation. There was a lot more personal preference of the human beings that were running them day-to-day, being manifest in the process, which ends up being manifest in the whisky later on. But underneath all that, there’s still a core distillery identity, because the ingredients being used, the processes and the equipment and the way they’re being run, it all holistically adds up to something which cannot do anything but create a charismatic type of product.

The other thing about Kythe that’s very important is it’s a commercial sized distillery. We never wanted to make something small and boutique and crafty. It’s a one-tonne mash distillery and if we really pushed it, we’d probably make about 200,000 litres, but we’re aiming for about 50,000. And our business plan and our model and everything, it all factors off this 50,000-litre production capacity because what we’re essentially trying to do is a business model which chucks yield out of the window, gets rid of yield efficiency, all those things and focuses in on quality equals value. And that is what ultimately delivers a sustainable business, which is good for us. This is a lifelong project for us, we want it to be our careers. It’s good for our shareholders. And hopefully it’s good for whisky enthusiasts and people who love tasting beautiful drams.

RG: Tell us about the wood-fired wash still and the challenges of working with something like that, and why you’ve gone for it.

JM: I think when we had our first sort of proper sit-down meeting with the engineers, they said: ‘Look, I don’t think this is possible’ to which the answer was: ‘Well, this is kind of the key part of the project, so we’re going to make it work.’

AM: It will probably be the biggest challenge. If we get that right and we work hard at it, it’s also something we can legitimately say, we really are making whisky with skill by hand in this sense. It’s been proven conclusively over the decades, it does make a damn big difference to the fatness and character of the distillate you make, especially when done in combination with worm tub condensing. And then on top of that, with the spirits still being electrically heated in a manner which mimics the character of direct firing as well, that’s the right balance and a nice little addition, which will help to emphasise this character of fatness and weight in the distillate as well.

The other component of this is, and the reason we ended up opting for wood over coal, is the environmental impact. A distillery of similar scale and spec using a kerosene boiler and driving steam stills would have, I think, 94 per cent higher emissions than us. We’re making a huge emission saving. And as time goes on and we can build in more renewable supply to our electricity requirements we’ll become greener and further sustainable. That’s something that genuinely matters to us. We care a great deal about it. We all think a lot about it, and we’re very conscious that going into the future businesses need to have legitimate sustainability at their heart, not greenwashing.

JM: Another interesting part about the direct fire still is in conjunction with the brewer’s yeast and it’s kind of a working theory. If we’re using brewer’s yeast instead of distiller’s yeast, that’s much less effective at eating sugar. And one of the key things is that brewer’s yeast doesn’t eat multi-trials, which distiller’s yeast does consume. So our wash, when it’s finished fermenting, should have more sugar in it than a modern wash. The main difference with a direct fire still is in temperature – where a steam coil still reaches about 110, 120 degrees, our wash still probably goes to about 400 degrees, so you’re going to get that Maillard reaction, but with more sugar in the wash. It’s a working theory that’s going to contribute to flavour and mouthfeel. That’s the theory anyway!

AM: It will also deliver that undulating character throughout the year when combined with natural variances in cooling across the seasons, which worm tubs would be more susceptible to, combined with the absolutely natural variation you’ll almost get from distillation to distillation through having, I suppose, quite a hands-on, labour-intensive and variable type of heating of the wash still, particularly. Over the course of a year, we think that builds in quite a lot of natural complexity and subtle variation of our distillery character, which, looking ahead to the sort of products that whisky lovers like these days, everyone loves to obsess over single casks. This is the sort of production process that helps build in the right kind of personality combined with the right variation that feeds into that kind of culture and that kind of love.

RG: The emphasis is clearly very much on the spirit that you create, possibly more than maturation. What are your thoughts about maturation? You want to let the spirit sing, obviously.

AM: Wood is still of huge importance, but what we want the wood to do is to sculpt and mature the distillate, not flavour it and not dominate it. We want the casks to be something which nurtures our spirit to maturity but we don’t want a whisky that tastes of splinters. Our view is that we’ll probably fill quite a variety in the early years to help us best understand how our spirit responds to different wood types and different levels of wood activity. But longer term, we’re likely to align around a wood policy dominated by second fill barrels, refill hogsheads, complemented, we hope, by some very carefully chosen sherry casks.

JM: Yeah, no red wine or virgin oak or any of that crap, frankly!

RG: When can we expect to see Kythe whisky in our glasses?

AM: Well, we’re not going to bottle it until we are happy with it, and we think that could be around five, six years old, depending on what the casks are telling us. We’re not going to rush, is the short answer.

JM: I would like to release something that’s five years in a refill cask that’s very different to what people are expecting, but distillate-driven, thick, fruity, waxy. Whether I’ll have that at five, eight or 10, I don’t know. But we want to be proud of our first bottling.

AM: The thing about amazing distillate is that it doesn’t need a lot of wood. Boring distillate needs wood because it has nothing else. But if you’ve got amazing distillate, it needs to be rounded out and sculpted and slapped on the ass a little bit, but it doesn’t need a lot of additive wood flavour. I hope that one day I’ll be able to slam a bottle of Kythe 100 proof five-year-old on the table that’s very pale and absolutely fruit bomb delicious. Watch this space and maybe in about eight years or so we’ll be able to pop the cork on something.