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Kitchen Chat and more…
Kitchen Chat and more…
Earlier in August 2020, Whiskygeeks had a chat with Managing Director of Origin Spirits Patrick Shelley. Origin Spirits has in its portfolio the Ornabrak Single Malt Gin, Kalak Single Malt vodka and the Currach Kombu Irish Whiskey.
Back in 2010, Patrick was living in Russia, working for LVMH (Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton SE) which owns Glenmorangie and Ardbeg distillery since 2004. And of course, in Mother Russia, the vodka culture is strong there. But the vodkas out in the market then was not to his taste. To get him through these times, he had drams of peated Scotches. *coughArdbegcough* This later inspired Patrick to want to design a vodka with personality, texture and flavour; a vodka he could enjoy! His love for peated Scotches later inspired the peat cask vodka!
With his time in LVMH, he gained much wisdom and experience which would help elevate Origin Spirits to where it is today. Patrick had three cornerstones in Origin Spirits:
Patrick works with West Cork distillers to create unique products that Origin Spirits offers. Patrick talks fondly about Director of West Cork Distillers, Dr John O’Connell, who holds not just one but two PhDs! Dr O’Connell saw some potential in Patrick’s ideas and was eager to help make Patrick’s ideas a reality!
Under LVMH, some of the brands Patrick used to work for had decades of history with tales abound. As a fresh new company, Patrick had instead created a story around the product, Kalak, weaving Irish folklore and gods with this beautiful spirit. You can read more about here!
Patrick wanted to use 100% Irish malted barley for several reasons. Even though malted barley cost around three times as much as other grains, Patrick wanted a quality product with personality. It also pays homage to the terroir of Irish local barley and a quality ingredient.
In West Cork distillers, malted barley is milled on site. This grist meets 63°C water in the mash tun and spends 2 hours mashing for sugar extraction. Heat exchangers then cool down the sugary liquid called wort to 27-29 °C. Distillers yeast is then added for inoculation. The fermentation lasts 96 hours, which is twice the amount of time as some Scotch whisky distilleries. This longer fermentation time allows for ester formation and lactic acid fermentation which produces fruitier and more complex flavours in the spirit. After 4 days of fermentation, the strong beer, or wash is at a whopping 11-12% abv.
The wash then goes into copper pot stills for distillation.. 3 times distilled for the whiskey, 4 times for the gin and 5 times for the vodka!
The casks used for Origin Spirits are not used for maturation more than twice. So far, Origin Spirits are only using American White Oak for their cask maturation. The casks Origin Spirits uses comes from the Kelvin cooperage in Kentucky.
Patrick stumbled on the idea of using seaweed to char the casks, which serves as a fuel source for the charring and imparts umami flavour to the oak. This marks Currach, the Kombu Irish Whisky, with the terroir of both the sea and land with Irish seaweed and barley. For Currach, Patrick prefers using virgin oak to bourbon casks as the bourbon flavours in the cask might interfere with the delicate umami flavours from the seaweed. Aged in ex-bourbon for 3-4 years then 3-month finish in virgin oak, as it maximises the kombu flavour, mellows the spirit and ensures the whiskey does not get too oaky.
The kombu used for the charring for Currach is a type of brown seaweed, and Patrick intends to experiment with other kinds of seaweed, like with red seaweed and green seaweed. Currently, Origin Spirits are using American White Oak, either virgin or ex-bourbon oak. Patrick wanted a mellower oak influence to allow the spirit character to shine. But Patrick has a never say never attitude, so sherry fans, stay tuned!
Patrick is going to experiment a lot more with food pairing, but progress has been slower due to the pandemic. But in general, Japanese cuisines, and umami dishes like steak or mushrooms works well with Kalak and Currach. Patrick describes those spirits as gastronomical and I would have to agree!
Origin Spirits has shown a lot of innovative products which excel in form and function. I am looking forward to their next release!
Kalak Single Malt Vodka is…oh wait, what? Single malt vodka, you said?! Yup! We were really excited when Sarah from The WhiskyStore invited us to the tasting of Kalak single malt vodka, gin and whiskey! It was a collaboration from The WhiskyStore and The Other Room to showcase their newest products in town.
Origin Spirits is the baby of Patrick Shelley (picture above). Founded in 2015, the company currently holds three different products – single malt vodka, gin and whiskey. Patrick previously worked for LVMH and loves his whiskies! However, he dislikes vodka because he couldn’t understand why people enjoy a drink that is tasteless! When Patrick started his own company, he decided to create a vodka that he likes to drink. He found his answer in local Irish barley and he swiftly set to work to develop a series of products made from malted barley.
Kalak is the phonetic spelling of the name of an Irish Celtic goddess. The name of the goddess is Cailleach and she is the Queen of Winter. Legends have it that she appears every winter to protect the animals from the harsh weather and when spring arrives, she turns into stone. She is the closest thing to Mother Nature that the Celts had; the embodiment of the darker, more powerful side of nature. Kalak takes her name as a reflection of Ireland’s terroir. The bottles hold Ireland, her weather and her people’s ancient knowledge in distillation.
Origin Spirits sources local Irish barley from the South East of Ireland as the farmers follow a strict chart of sustainability. The wort from the fermentation is distilled four times in a copper still to make sure that the vodka hits 96% abv as per the rules from the European Union. These are then watered down to 40% before bottling. The vodka is clean and smooth, with notes of butter cookies, salt and some fruitiness. It is definitely not the usual vodka that we see in the market!
What got us really excited, however, is the PEATED Kalak Single Malt Vodka. The peated version is technically a cask-aged vodka. Origin Spirits buys virgin American oak casks and charred them with peat fire to infuse the cask with smoke. The vodka is put into the casks for four months to allow the spirit to develop a delicious smokey flavour on top of the buttery character from its standard single malt vodka expression.
Origin Spirits uses the base spirits from its vodka production to create a floral and complex gin. The four-time distilled base spirit goes through a fifth distillation with five botanicals carefully sourced to emerge as Ornabrak Gin. The five botanticals are juniper berries, lemon peels, angelica roots, Douglas fir, and lemon verbena. The distilled gin is cut at 76% abv and watered down to 43% abv before bottling. The nose is full of citrus peels (think orange and lemon), hint of white pepper, gentle juniper notes and lavendar. The palate is smooth with citrus peels and lavender petals. The finish is full of orange and lavender. It is also drying which makes you want to have more.
Currach single malt Irish whiskey is the one bottle from the entire offering that got us jumping up and down with impatience. The whiskey matures in ex-bourbon casks before getting a finish in a seaweed-infused cask for two to three months! How exotic is that!?
When Patrick first decided to do a whiskey, he wanted to add a new element to his whiskey. As he looks into Ireland’s terroirs, he stumbled upon seaweed. The seaweeds that he uses grow in abundance around Ireland’s coasts and the family of harvesters whom he works with takes pride in their ability to keep the business sustainable through their hand-harvesting technics.
Patrick experimented with seaweed and oak chips extensively before going to full production. What they do is to first cook and dry the seaweed to remove the natural “fishy smell”. The team uses 0.5kg of dried seaweed per virgin American oak cask. They lit a fire using the seaweed as a sort of fuel. Once the fire is stable, they closed the cask and then rolled it around to ensure the burning seaweed reaches every part. They repeated the process six times for each cask.
The nose is full of kombu dashi, sweetness, a hint of sea brine and nuts. Once it opens up, the fragrance of roasted black sesame seeds is undeniable. The palate is nutty, with some sea salt and a dash of kombu dashi. The light smoke couples with roasted black sesame seeds to produce a sweetness that is quite unlike any other whiskies. The finish is extremely long, with some ash and full-on black sesame seeds. It’s really lovely once the whiskey opens up, so be a little patient when trying it!
The session also started and ended with cocktails made from The Other Roof. We started with Espresso Smokatini, which is a cocktail made from espresso and PEATED Kalak Single Malt Vodka. It was superbly delicious! The creamy foam increased the enjoyment of the cocktail. Any coffee lover needs to try it!
The second cocktail is Zucien Gaudin, made with Ornabrak Gin. The addition of Campari made the cocktail rather bitter, so it wasn’t as enjoyable as the first one. However, anyone who is in love with Campari would definitely fall in love with this one!
As usual, you can find all the products (except the cocktails) retailing at The Whisky Store. Prices are reasonable so go ahead and buy them! Do tag WhiskyGeeks and The Whisky Store on social media when you crack the bottles open and have a go!
Loch Lomond is the largest Scottish loch. It is a beautiful place with many exciting tourist attractions along the way. One could stop by the Loch to try and spot Nessie, followed by a lunch picnic if one is so inclined.
The team at WhiskyGeeks, however, was after the treasure to be found at Loch Lomond. The whiskies at Loch Lomond Distillery are not just one or two styles like many other distilleries. We attended an online tasting with the Master Distiller of Loch Lomond Group, Bill White and Whisky Blender, Ashley Smith to learn more.
Before we dive into the whisky part, let us take a walk down memory lane to see how Loch Lomond and its distillery started.
If you are wondering why our title talks about the sun shining on Loch Lomond, it is a line from a traditional Scottish song “The Bonnie Banks o’ Loch Lomond”. Published in 1841 in Vocal Melodies of Scotland, the song referred to the Battle of Culloden Moor where the Scottish soldiers, led by Bonnie Prince Charlie, was unsuccessful in their attempt to overthrow the King of England, George II.
The song tells the story of two soldiers who were imprisoned at Carlisle Castle. One of them would die while the other would go free. According to Celtic legend, if a Celt dies in a foreign land, his spirit would travel back home via “the low road”, which is the road for the soul. In the song, the soldier to be executed sang, “O ye’ll tak’ the high road, and I’ll tak’ the low road”. The story is bittersweet, and you can learn more about the song from here.
Loch Lomond distillery has its history seeped in the six Celtic clans that surround the loch. These clans include the Colquhoun, McFarlane, Galbraith, Macaulay, MacGregor, Menzies and Buchanan. The above map taken from the Loch Lomond distillery website showed how the clans surrounded the loch. We are not sure why or how Stewart and Cunningham come into the picture, though.
If you looked at the map, you would see on the top, a mark named “Original Distillery”. This is the site where the first Loch Lomond distillery was built. The former Loch Lomond dated back to 1814, at the northern part of Loch Lomond near Tarbat. It is no longer there today, and nobody knew what happened or when it closed. Wikipedia said that it closed in 1817, but it is still unverified today.
The current Loch Lomond distillery opened in 1964. Built by the owners of the now-defunct Littlemill Distillery (the irony!), the distillery is now down south of Loch Lomond, in the village of Bowling. Malt production started in 1965 and continued to 1984 before the distillery was mothballed for three years. It restarted production after Glen Catrine Bonded Warehouse bought the business in 1987. The owners then began grain distillation in 1993 and added two new malt stills in 1999. In 2014, the private equity group Exponent bought the distillery. After five years, Chinese Hillhouse Capital bought over the Loch Lomond Group in June 2019.
Loch Lomond is a whisky for the everyday drinker and the geeks! No wonder Captain Haddock from the TinTin series loved it! With eight styles of single malt distillation, single grain and various kinds of yeast used, this sounds like a Japanese whisky distillery in the heart of Scotland. With so many variables, let’s shed some light to get our heads around Loch Lomond whisky
Many Japanese whisky distilleries play around with various yeast types and distillation styles, like those from Mars or Suntory; and in that regard, Loch Lomond does something similar. Despite that, Loch Lomond only uses Scottish barley. Other than unpeated barley, the distillery takes in peated barley at 25ppm and 50ppm. The barley is peated by a maltster, but the peat used originates from Carnoustie.
Many other distilleries have fermentation times of 48-50 hours as that is enough to maximise alcohol yield, as seen in the graph below. However, Loch Lomond takes a whopping 92 hours for its fermentation! This longer fermentation encourages esterification and adds fruitier flavours.
There are eight styles of single malt distillation and two styles of single grain. I know this is a lot to take in, but it is all summarised in the picture below from Loch Lomond’s twitter.
The straight-neck stills are a bit confusing. The High Strength refers to the higher average strength of distillate due to the increased reflux from a cooling ring (see: partial condenser), and Low Strength refers to the lower average strength of distillate when the cooling ring is not used. With the added reflux for their High Strength distillation, the stillmen increases the heating of the straight neck pot still to keep the distillate flow rate, and hence the duration of distillation, constant.
Now let’s talk drams! 😀 (Note: I will be giving my commentary rather than just tasting notes)
Unlike almost all other scotch single grains, the mash bill is comprised of 100% Malted Barley. The spirit runs off a continuous still at 85% rather than 94%, which means that more cogeners will be present in the spirit, giving more body and flavour than almost all other Scottish single grains.
Entirely from Straight Neck Stills with reflux, this unpeated Whisky is very fruity. In my opinion, I found it to be especially orange-y. There will also be a Single Cask 10yo released exclusively for Whisky Journey 2020!
As seen in the helpful photo summary, Loch Lomond 12 Official Bottling is a blend of unpeated and medium peated Whisky. According to Ashley Smith, whisky blender at Loch Lomond, about 15% of this bottling is medium peated Whisky! This recipe gives this single malt a wonderfully complex blend of fruitiness and peat.
This OB is a rather dignified 18yo single malt! Although the fruitiness and peat were not as prominent as the 12yo, the musky and waxy notes take the lead. If you enjoy the waxy notes in Clynelish, you will enjoy this too!
As mentioned in the summarised table of spirit styles, Inchmoan is a blend of 50ppm distillates from both the swan-neck pot still and the straight-neck pot still. Despite that, the dram was a lot more balanced than expected, with fruity notes along with loud notes of minerality, earthiness and smoke!
Other than the names you would see in the core range, you may see other names pop up in old bottlings or independent bottlings like Glen Douglas, Old Rhosdhu, Craiglodge, Croftengea and Inchfad. The first two of those names being unpeated, and the last 3 being peated variants.
Inchfad and Croftengea are heavily peated (50ppm), while Craiglodge is lightly peated (25ppm). The ‘Old Rhosdhu’ name used to refer to a style of single malt distilled at Loch Lomond up to the year 2000. Today Rhosdhu is used internally to refer to the single grain distilled from 100% malted barley.
The WhiskyStore is the official distributor of the Loch Lomond whiskies. You can check out their online store to see the expression on sale!
If you are thinking of visiting once the pandemic tones down, do remember that the distillery does not accept visitors. You will have to try and contact them via email to check if you can visit. Otherwise, take a trip down to Loch Lomond and enjoy the beauty of the place.
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