Distillers are turning to unusual fuels, says drinks expert Alice Lascelles.
I’ve tasted some pretty unusual whiskies in my life but none quite as unique as Floki Sheep Dung-Smoked Reserve Icelandic Single Malt, which is distilled from Icelandic barley kilned with droppings dug from the shelters where sheep spend the winter.
This dung was traditionally used as fuel for cooking and heating, so using it to make whisky wasn’t such a stretch, says Maria Sigurbjörnsdóttir, the manager of Eimverk, the family-owned distillery which produces the malt. “Our new make [unaged whisky] has a lot of earthy flavors, like hay and grass so the dung smoke kind of adds to that.” It’s also a more sustainable fuel source, she adds, than plundering slow-growing peat bogs.
I have to say I rather like Floki – it has a sweet farmyardyness and lanolin/sheeps wool warmth to it that reminds me of the grassy fells in the north of England where I like to hike. It’s a wonderful story. But, still, I thought it would be a hard sell.
Seems not, as I was amazed to learn this week, from the Whisky Exchange’s buying director Dawn Davies, that it was one of the best-sellers at London’s last Whisky Show. Right up there with rare bottlings from Glenfiddich, Octomore, and Chichibu.
I shouldn’t have been surprised – smoke is a note that exerts a powerful hold over the human brain. It speaks of comfort, connection, safety, something ancient (and, of course, it sometimes spells danger). And Eimverk is just one of a growing number of distilleries that are smoking their whiskies with things other than Scottish peat; that are looking to local fuels to imbue the spirits they make with a stronger sense of place.
The Danish grain-to-glass distillery Thy (pronounced ‘Too’) uses local beechwood to smoke its single malt Thy Bøg. The result is a rich sherry-cask whisky with nutty-sweet notes of smoky bacon, autumn apples and maple syrup.
“As a Dane, beechwood smoke feels deeply familiar,” says co-owner / master distiller Jakob Stjernholm. “The moment you put your nose to a glass of our Bøg whisky, you get this warm, gentle, and comforting smokiness — like sitting in front of a fireplace, or catching the scent of a distant campfire somewhere in the woods.”
Thy grows all its own grain and is 100% organic – so sustainability is a big motive for using beechwood rather than peat. “From the very beginning of our distillery in 2010, , to make whisky that came directly from our farm, our soil, and our local turf,” says Stjernholm. “As farmers, we wanted to farm whisky. So when thinking about smoke for our malts, we wanted to explore what was truly local.”
Nordic distilleries have also produced whiskies smoked with heather (Stauning, Denmark), juniper (Mackmyra, Sweden) and nettles (Fary Lochan, Finland).
Australia’s Archie Rose distillery is perhaps the most experimental of all, using a whole host of different smokes in its malting and cask-seasoning processes.
“It always sat uneasy with me that we were dragging Scottish peated malt half way round the world,” says master distiller Dave Withers. ‘We wanted to represent what it is to be Australian – we’ve got a long and illustrious history of distilling in Oz, it was legal in Oz before it was in the UK how would they have kilned their malt in the 1800s?”
Inspired by the BBQ scene, they started kilning barley with native hard woods including Red Gum, or Aussie eucalyptus, (“smoked meat/bacon, herbaceous, quite floral”), and ‘stringy bark’ aka mountain ash (“full, less floral, almost sticky”). They’ve also released a bold-tasting series of ‘Smoked Cask’ limited editions, aged in casks that have been smoked with local botanicals including cinnamon, juniper, which has a resinous, incense-y character, lavender and wattleseed (“bacon, macadamia, fudge”).
“Great whisky doesn’t start life in the distillery, it starts in the paddock and having that connection to the land is so important,” says Withers.
Whisky del Bac is a single malt from Arizona that’s smoked with mesquite wood from the surrounding desert. Its creator, Stephen Paul, was working as a furniture maker when the idea came to him one evening, as he was firing up a barbecue with off-cuts from his business. “Mesquite grows very twisted, but that gives you a beautiful wood, with lots of flaws and knots and cracks that you can employ to your advantage to come up with a really beautiful grain,” he says. “But its smoke is also well-known for imparting a real flavor to what you cook. On a winter’s evening in Tucson the smell of mesquite woodfires fills the air. It’s really evocative of this place.”
The resulting whisky tastes of toasted marshmallows, dry-roasted nuts and ashy, glowing embers. “It’s a whiskey,” says Paul, “that tastes of where I live.”
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