A day in the life of...a stillman

It's been a tradition in Scotland for hundreds of years, but how has the role of whisky maker changed? David Fleetwood reports

The clear liquid cascading through the spirit safe under the watchful eye of the stillman is the heart, the core spirit which, after at least three years maturation, will become single malt whisky.

The flavours embodied in a dram are a product of spring water, malt, sometimes peat smoke and a sweet woodiness gained from the time the spirit spends maturing in the barrel. These are powerful flavours which individually might be overwhelming were it not for the experience and skill of the stillman who blends and balances them to create the perfect whisky.

This experience is gained through a lifetime of working in the distillery and an intimate knowledge of the properties of the water and other ingredients with which he works, and also through an inherited tradition of distilling that has been passed down through generations. The stillman's care of the spirit safe marks a revolution in the role of the stillman, whose forebears ran illicit stills and were constantly dodging the excise men.

The art of whisky distillation is thought to have been brought to Islay, Scotland's most famous whisky island, by Irish monks sometime in the early 14th century. The conditions on the island were ideally suited to distilling with good supplies of peat alongside lochs and burns. The crofters also subsisted on the crops of bere they grew. This was a forerunner to barley, and what was not eaten was distilled into spirit.

For two centuries after the introduction of distilling to Islay, the proces...

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• By : David Fleetwood
• In : Interview
• Issue : 42
• Page : 46
• Words : 1,440