Review: Kilchoman Machir Bay, The "It" Beast

December 4, 2013

Review: Kilchoman Machir Bay, The "It" Beast

"As fearfully as doth a gallèd rock
O'erhang and jutty his confounded base,
Swilled with the wild and wasteful ocean.
Now set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide,
Hold hard the breath and bend up every spirit"

Islay

Once more unto the breach our friends, we find ourselves on the island of Islay.  The home of the mythical Hebridean beasts that lived in peat bogs as thick as the Amazon and breathed smoke from their nostrils that would kill a mere mortal man by scent alone.

Map of Islay by Jason Hicklin

To the east:

Coal Ila, founded 1846

Bowmore, founded 1779

Bunnahabhain, founded 1881  

To the south:

Ardbeg, founded 1815

Laphroaig, founded 1815

Lagavulin, founded 1742

Big boys.  

So big in fact that no one dared to build a new distillery on Islay for over a hundred and twenty years. But then, in 2005, tucked into the northwest peninsula of the island, a new beast was born.  Free from the corporate domesticity that had tamed its elders, this young, wild, and ferocious creature drank freely from the local springs, grazed on the thick of its native barley, and grew to breathe a smoke so dense and dark that its fire was rumored to burn the earth and boil the oceans.  

or something like that...

Kilchoman

We're speaking, or course, about Kilchoman.  And if you follow scotch, you're already talking about it too.  There's something going on with this distillery that's got people going nuts.  It's that intangible "It" factor, that nod and raise of the eyebrow among whiskyphiles that makes a brand blow up.  And when you're at a whisky show where the average scotch is twelve to twenty-five years old but there's a line of people waiting to taste a five year old spirit, you know something unique is happening.  

Family Business

Anthony Wills founded Kilchoman in 2005.  We met his son James, who currently runs sales & marketing for the distillery, at a whisky event in New York a couple of months ago.  James grew up living and breathing in the world of single malt and has a great perspective on where the industry is today.  Below is part one our conversation with James along with a review of Kilchoman Machir Bay, their core bottling.  Stay tuned for the rest of the interview and reviews of their other offerings: Loch Gorm Sherry Cask, and 100% Islay.

Son, we've got something to talk to you about...

What was it like when your father decided to open a distillery?

I can remember when my father actually sat us down and said, ‘Now we’ve got something to talk to you about.’ And it was me and my two brothers. And maybe a year or two earlier my uncle had had a similar discussion and he’d told us that they were going to have another baby after having a ten year gap. And so immediately my mind though 'My God, what is this going to be about?'  And then it wasn’t that my mother was pregnant, but that we were moving to Islay and dad was going to set up the distillery. And I had no idea what that was going to involve.

What were the early days like?

I claim to have done every job in the distillery. When the stills first arrived, I was the one up on a stepladder polishing them. I worked in the still house for six months. During university holidays I worked in the café. And I have to say the hardest working people in all of the distillery are the guys that work in the café and the visitors center. The guys have got it easy in the still house.

It’s been a very interesting and rewarding experience. Well I can say rewarding now because things are beginning to move in the right direction. There was a big period of time where my father was in a constant battle for more funding and just trying to going to keep it going. It’s by no means been all positive, it’s been a real struggle to get where we are now. But things are beginning to come together.

Were there any lessons you learned through those early times?

James Wills

Throughout all the periods of time where we have been short of cash one thing that has now proved to be massively important is that we have never compromised on how we produce the spirit. So there were lots of ways that we could have produced something that was more cost effective, but we wanted to produce something that was first and foremost a good whisky.  I guess we realized that if you’re going to sell scotch whisky to scotch whisky enthusiasts, there’s no pulling the wool over people’s eyes. You’re judged on the contents of the bottle rather than the packaging when you’re talking about that area of the market. 

Tell us about some of those choices...

In terms of raw ingredients, we don’t make as much whiskey per ton of barley when we’re using the malt that we grow ourselves.  And in terms of how we run the equipment, we’ve got a very long fermentation time which takes up a lot of capacity.  And the way that we run our stills, we only take a small cut, which means that we produce a clean spirit which means that it's faster maturing.  And then with the casks, we source all our bourbon casks from Buffalo Trace. 

How are things different today?

Certainly this year we’ve seen a big change.  Last year we had these limited editions like the Loch Gorm and the 100% [Islay] which we only released about 10,000 bottles of worldwide. Last year they were taking perhaps 6 months to sell through from the distillery, and this year they sold on allocation. So this time we’ve been telling distributors how much we can send them which is a nice position to be in.

To be continued...  Now on to the tasting!

Machir Bay

Nose:  Salted white chocolate floating on a sea of peat.  Very strong smoke, but beautifully balanced with the sweetness and ocean breeze saltiness.

Palate:  Ok the nose was BIG smoke, so we're getting ready for some Laphroaig-
style fire.  A hearty burn on the back of the throat, some sandpaper and raw pepper.  How close are we?  One hundred and eighty degrees wrong!  The palate is completely clean.  It's light... olive oil and lemon on the tongue.  Some sweet tangerines and a little bit of candied nuts.

Finish:  The peat comes back for a little heat right on the swallow.  Then it's a long and round finish with wet campfire stones smoldering smoke up the back of the throat and across the roof of the mouth.  All the sweetness, chocolate and citrus come back, with the addition of a little white oak and green grapes.

Review:  This is a really unique dram.  The nose is awesome: huge smoke, sea brine, rock salt chocolate.  The palate is superbly clean and fresh.  The finish is a great balance between those two.  Rarely have we found these characteristics together in a scotch.  Perhaps this could only happen in a young spirit that retains its rawness but is superbly handled for a clean and sweet result.  A must try for peat lovers!

Click here for part two of our interview with James Wills and review of the rest of the Kilchoman line!

Cheers/SB

"The Fine Line Between Heat and Personal Injury" - An Interview with Chip Tate of Balcones Distilling

June 11, 2013

"The Fine Line Between Heat and Personal Injury" - An Interview with Chip Tate of Balcones Distilling

A Break for Brilliance

We're taking a quick diversion from our birthday-month 1975 vintage bonanza to bring you Part Two of our piece on Balcones Brimstone - an interview with the head distiller of Balcones Distilling - Chip Tate.  We've been craving Brimstone so hard since our original review, that a chance to speak with the brains behind the smoke was something we couldn't pass up.  

Chip at Home (Balcones)

The Caviar of Whiskey

SmokyBeast:    Chip, Brimstone was just an awesome experience!  Thanks for taking some time to talk with SmokyBeast.

Chip Tate:    "Thanks for your support."

SB    So clearly you appreciate a good beast.  We read that you spent some time in Islay.  Was that the inspiration for Brimstone or how did you come up with the concept?

CT    "Yeah well I’ve always liked peated whiskey and there were times when I’d considered doing a peated malt, which I thought would be fun. We moved away from that just because as cool as it is, that’s really a Scottish thing.  The true story about Brimstone is that I was in the backyard by myself for about five hours without kids or anybody, which is kind of a weird thing, so I was just by myself and I started playing with oak and fire and whiskey and the concept was born. Then I figured I’d try the same thing on a bigger scale, in my licensed distillery rather than in the backyard, so I guess you could say that it accidentally became our iconic Texas whiskey."

SB    So you just had some oak sitting around in the yard?

CT    "Yeah I always have some well-cured oak and pecan and different woods because I like to cook a lot. And hence the entry of smoking whiskey, which is dangerous, but I liked what I got and never looked back.  The way I would describe the flavor is kind of like caviar. It’s the finest quality of smoke, only in high quantity. So it’s actually very subtle whiskey I think even though it’s also very powerful. Sometimes you think of those things are mutually exclusive, but I don’t think they are."

The Line Between Enjoyable and Personal Injury 

SB    So we saw beer go through the crazy hop phase with Hop Devil, Hoptical Illusion, Hop Stoopid, and on and on.  Then we saw the peat wars happening in malts with Octomore, Supernova, and Smokehead, etc.  Do you think you're about to set off a contest for the smokiest American whiskey?

CT    "I was a craft brewer for a while and was an out of control home brewer for even longer than that, and one thing I learned is to never let novelty and power be an excuse for a lack of balance. Don’t just see how many hops you can get in a beer because that’s very adolescent. Do it once and get over it and then figure out if you’re going to make a really hoppy beer, how do you make it balanced? Pilsner Urquell is a very hoppy beer, but it doesn’t run over the malt." 

SB    We talk about that balance all the time.  It's why malts like Lagavulin, while not the smokiest, are our favorites.  We noticed it right away in Brimstone.  It's wildly smoky, but very well-balanced.

CT    "Yeah, it’s intriguing to play with something like Brimstone, because it’s in danger of becoming out of balance at every moment.  It’s almost like Indian Curry, the line between enjoyable heat and physical injury is carefully walked on a regular basis. But that just adds more intrigue as long as you don’t actually cross it.  That’s what we’re trying to do: have the smoke, as big a player as it is, be one of several other major players to create that counterpoint and that balance."

Is That Grain You're Smoking?

SB    So how does one smoke a liquid?

CT    "Very carefully.  Smoke is kind of a funny thing. Because we’re smoking the whiskey, there are some aspects of smoke that fade in time and some aspects that get deeper. We’re getting more aspects of the smoke into the whiskey than can be done by smoking grain.  If you’re smoking grain, then it’s whatever dissolves into the mash, comes through the mash into the wash, and then into the spirit. Whereas if you’re actually smoking spirit, it’s a whole different animal."

SB   Let’s talk a little about color.  Brimstone is such a beautiful color and we’ve seen so many older whiskeys that don’t get that gorgeous dark caramel hue.

CT    “Thanks.  So that’s the wood. And it’s because we use only fully yard-aged wood. Most people say ‘oh yeah we yard-age our wood,' and they mean like three, four, or up to six months. They’d be fools not to yard-age it that long because it dries out so quickly. But from that point they kiln it off, dry it out, and make barrels out of it. Now, there’s nothing wrong with using a kiln, it’s just that there are certain things a kiln doesn’t do. When you let wood sit outside, you basically have a controlled rot process going on. The rain is washing off the harsher tannins and really breaking down the structure of the wood." 

A General Dislike of Half-Ass

SB    We're getting the picture that you're very serious about your barrels.

CT    "I’m always pounding the podium about using fully yard-aged wood, fine grain wood, all the things that we do at Balcones. The downside of course is that a new barrel for us costs around $500 versus $75. But to me that’s so important. You have to understand why you’re using a barrel. It’s not just for getting wood color, it’s not just to evaporate the whiskey, it’s not just to put whiskey in contact with charcoal, there’s other ways to do all those things. It’s the oxidation effect. The chemical breathing that happens in and out of the wood. We have a general dislike of half-ass at Balcones. Anything that’s worth doing is worth doing right. If you’re going to take a risk (and whiskey is a risky business), go all in. 

Yeast Are Living Creatures with Rights

SB   That seems to be a common theme across everything you're doing.

CT    "It is.  We use a very nice heirloom blue corn. And it’s expensive, but it’s got a really nice flavor. Most distilleries are fermenting for 48-72 hours. We ferment for a week. The simplest way to put it is ‘yeast are living creatures and when you work them to death they make stinky smells', and we like pretty smells. Most distilleries are doing a very fast fermentation which stresses the yeast and then you have a lot of nasties to deal with."  

SB    So is that the secret of getting the whiskey so smooth without such a long aging process?

CT    "Well let's put it this way, when they do this, they have a choice to make: you can either take a lot of those nasties out in the still, and end up with a much more neutral whiskey; or you can make a rich whiskey and include a lot of those less desirable by-products, and then let them age out. And that’ll work, but to get that smoothness it’ll take 15 or 20 plus years, especially in a cold place like Scotland. And then you lose other possibilities too, since you’re losing some of the malty characteristics as it gets older. And I’m not saying I don’t like scotch whisky. I love Scotch whisky. I guess what I’m saying is I want to have my cake and eat it too. I want a whiskey the doesn’t need to be aged that long but can be aged that long. 

Inside Scoop: Brimstone Resurrection 

SB    So, speaking of aging, can we hope to see a vintage bottling of Brimstone?

CT    "Well we have four casks that we’re going to release this year in celebration of our fifth anniversary. We have a Brimstone in that release which is slightly older. It’s nice and it’s really intense. It’s going to be called Brimstone Resurrection. It’ll be full cask strength, like 64%.

SB   That's awesome, we can't wait to try it.  Hey Chip thanks for your time and thanks for the whiskey!

CT    "You're welcome."

Click here to continue reading - Balcones, The Birth of a Beast - Part 3...