Terroir is a useful way to think about whisky because it acts as a challenge to the official industry consensus about itself, about its product and about its history. Scotch Whisky is commercially dominated by blends, but it is underpinned by malt whiskies. We are told time and time again that if it wasn’t for blends there would be no malts etc. But is that true? Is there any reason, if the 1909 Royal Commission had gone the other way and found in favour of the Distillers, that a different kind of industry, one perhaps more like what happened with French wine, might have evolved? It’s impossible to know, but I believe that the secondary industry that is emerging today, largely consisting of smaller, independent distilleries intent on doing something different to the mainstream industry, is perhaps, finally, an indication of what has always been possible with Scottish malt whisky. Not everyone in this emergent wave of distilleries adheres to a philosophy of terroir, but almost everyone borrows some of its adjacent ideas and language – everyone wants to talk about, and demonstrate, local, sustainable, quality, individuality etc.

In the same sense, it is useful to really think about it technically. The argument against terroir existing in whisky is often underpinned by a focus on distillation, on its violence and the hot, turbulent nature of the process. But these arguments often frame distillation as a process of deletion, when it is really one of concentration. Is the collective weight of ingredient and site-specific characteristics truly muted by the distillation process? Or is it instead narrowed and focused? Certainly, in the pot still, I would argue that a lot of the collective character of ingredients and process up to that point are born beyond those fiery copper necks. I would argue that the greater hurdle for terroir character, and for site-specific distillery character, is wood. Wood is potentially the true agent of muting and obfuscation - if not necessarily total deletion.

If you want to truly embrace terroir, you should really be embracing and using totally plain, refill, neutral wood. Wood should be as uniform and deferential to distillate as possible. As yet, no one has done this, probably because it would be commercially impossible. Terroir is a wonderful idea, but to truly put it into practice, to really cleave utterly close to the implications of the philosophy, would be an impracticality too far for most distilling businesses. What begins as a marketeer’s dream, becomes a salesperson’s nightmare at the business end. This is something evidenced by Waterford: noble ideas expressed in many, many good bottlings that were a challenge, ultimately, to sell.

A final consideration about terroir, is the ‘people’ component. Ten years ago, I wrote this piece about whisky and terroir, with a particular focus on people. Broadly, I argued that whisky’s disconnection from the land over the 20th century, mirrored the distancing of Scottish people from their land. I think I still agree with what I wrote. It’s hard to dispute the idea that we are estranged from the physical land in which we live; the Scotland in which Scotch Whisky is made indisputably exerts less influence on the character of those whiskies than it did a century ago.

Herein lies another challenge for embracing terroir in Scotch Whisky. We aren’t out physically tending the barley over the season, harvesting it by hand and then immediately commencing production. Ultimately, even if local barley is used, it’s a rather distant process: large scale, commercial, agricultural, industrial, broken up in odd chunks of time. Modern people are almost entirely disconnected from the land around them, and modern whisky production is often far removed from the individual human scale. Multiple layers of separation exist and must be overcome for terroir to start to ring true in Scotch Whisky, especially when compared with modern wine growing and making practice.

To overcome these obstacles, to strip away these distances, we come back to conscious decision making. The frequently expensive and uncommercial deliberate decision making to force the land, the human workers and the method of manufacture into closer proximity in a manner which is clear and makes intellectual and technical sense. It’s a hard thing to do, to truly achieve this you have to pass through a minefield of potential gimmickry and come prepared to counter the pessimisms of your audience. One of terroir’s greatest stumbling blocks is the cynicism that confronts it. Ultimately – most critically - you also have to come up with something tangible and credible to show why it was worth it.

I would argue that those obvious challenges surrounding its meaningful, and successful implementation in Scotch Whisky, are one of the strongest arguments for why it is a good idea. We live in age where there’s an abundance of whisky, more of the stuff than ever is bottled as single malt and there’s never been such a tyranny of choice or wide selection from which the drinker/collector can choose. The trouble is, so much of it is boring, the age of abundance is also the age of mediocrity. Any serious, quality-oriented, differentiated approach to breaking free of this mediocrity vortex is vital and to be lauded and supported. Terroir, in my view, is not about the obsessive, scientific burden of proof over whether and to what extent it exists; it’s a philosophy that provides useful approaches for modern whisky making and a means to produce characterful, distinctive, high-quality whiskies that stand necessarily apart from the masses. Yes, like all products, a commercial balance must be struck, they have to be correctly (often cleverly) marketed and sold, but it can provide a bedrock of something different and interesting that goes beyond the standardised modern malt whisky playbook.

Ultimately, I would argue that achieving meaningful differentiation is going to become ever more important in the coming years. This past year, it has become utterly clear that Scotch Whisky is not in a happy place. I see it in my day-to-day work as an independent bottler, and I hear about it from colleagues across ever sector of the industry. There are going to be some very difficult years ahead for whisky and I believe authentic distinctiveness will become a great asset of durability for whisky businesses. In short: if you’re boring, you are more exposed.

I think back to my trip to Orkney earlier this year and about what has happened in the intervening months. I’ve since heard that Scapa have been quietly buying up and distilling with a lot of Orkney Bere barley. I’ve had the chance to visit Brora and taste their very impressive new make. I’ve still yet to make it up to Glen Garioch to visit their post-refurbishment floor maltings and direct fired stills – but I think it’s telling that they did this. At time of writing, some of the larger industry players are starting to sell a lot more whisky at much cheaper prices. Things feel like they are changing quite quickly, and there are signs of admission through action from larger companies that things like quality, approach and pricing needed to change.

Terroir is just one approach to making whisky, and not an easy one. It is one which provides a strong intellectual basis and set of approaches that, sensibly deployed, can deliver distinctiveness and quality. That’s why it’s interesting, that’s why it matters and that’s why I think it is important to give practitioners a chance and a hearing when they decide to go down that path. Ultimately though, while it is intellectually fascinating if a distillery business can demonstrate that their whisky expresses terroir, I believe it is of greater importance (for the industry and for the drinker) that it possesses high quality. The most successful pursuit of terroir is one that binds it together with quality. 

Orkney was something of an emotional trip for me. It was a trip we’d originally planned to take with my Dad. He had always wanted to see Orkney, but cancer and Covid had other ideas. In the end it took us five years after he passed away to make the journey up there. Life looks very different now, with two young children and so much having changed in those intervening years. Our kids had a wonderful time on Orkney. That confrontational awareness of the impermanence of all things that Orkney delivers, alongside the joyfulness and innocence of young children playing outside and becoming aware of nature, is a heady cosmic potion to consume. At night the wind would rally and tear about the cottage we were staying in, I would step out into that howling darkness until it stung. It is possible to understand in those moments why the farther flung parts of these Islands are called ‘thin’ places, where the distance between the living and the dead grows narrow to the point of perforation. It’s a place and feeling that can deliver an indescribable sense of calm. It’s also a physical situation and state of mind which makes the whisky in your glass taste so unbelievably fucking good.

That would be my one final point about why terroir matters, feelings of relation and belonging to the land grant whisky an emotive power. Without that sense of emotional resonance, whisky is meaningless to me, just hot alcohol. My lifelong passion and love for this drink is underpinned by emotional ley lines of connection that lend it meaning. I am certain that’s the case for many of us. Those lines of connection can feel severed by mediocrity and modern whisky’s more vulgar traits, just as they can be invigorated by the beauty and social pleasures of this drink. The endeavour to make room for terroir in whisky, even just one firm root into the land, also creates space for these types of meaning, connection and emotion that clinically efficient manufacture can never hope to match.

Angus MacRaild for Whiskyfun

Terroir is a French concept, one evolved and nurtured over centuries. It describes the collective influence of soil, geology, climate, habitat and agricultural practice that collectively can be noticeably manifest in the final character of a product. Most commonly wine, but also other products as well. Terroir has also been argued to exist in people too, that regional characteristics related to the land and environment can be found in local populations as well. Finally, the most critical thing about terroir as it relates to French wine, is cumulative recognition and intellectual consensus arrived at over centuries of discussion and analysis. It is this latter point that Scotch Whisky lacks. We are just at the outset of that process in many ways, which is what makes our debates about this subject both healthy and necessary.

I would characterise the modern ‘cultural’ era of whisky as aligning with the proliferation of the internet in the late 1990s. I would distinguish that from what we might define as a modern ‘production’ era, which is roughly from the early 1970s until today. In this modern cultural era, the people who pushed the discussion of terroir and made the case for it were Bruichladdich, chiefly Mark Reynier, who later further asserted this philosophy at Waterford. They were not the first people to talk about Scotch Whisky with language and ideas that alluded to concepts of terroir. Aeneas MacDonald’s book ‘Whisky’, published in 1930, expressed many viewpoints about Scotch Whisky which attributed its character to geographical influence. Indeed, this book is a fascinating artefact of an early, pre-modern era of specifically Scottish malt whisky enthusiasm. Malt whisky marketing from its fledgling era of the 1900s through to the 1980s, would frequently talk about water, glens, lochs, Highland air, Highland people, peat, tradition; things which are all potentially part of a much more formal definition of terroir. Ideas from wine were frequently repurposed for Scotch Whisky marketing, but rarely ever explicitly expressed. I remember being struck by the neck tag on an old 1970s bottle of Sherriff’s Bowmore that described it as ‘bone dry’ and ‘mineral’ – language very obviously re-purposed from wine. It was an approach which seems typical of Scotch Whisky: it would rather borrow and re-purpose, than create something bespoke.

It was out of this world that Reynier and co took the next step and explicitly connected Scottish malt whisky with terroir. This was, at least in the initial phase, purely marketing, a way to speak about and sell a product which had been produced in a relatively unremarkable and traditional ‘modern’ manner with the destination of blended Scotch the intent. This is the most immediate ‘why’ of terroir in Scotch Whisky: a way to distinguish, to market and to sell a product that sets you apart from much larger, commercial competitors in a crowded marketplace. It is also one of the arguments that those who readily dismiss the existence of terroir in whisky reach for: it’s just marketing bullshit. It’s a useful argument as it reveals that, if you are going to talk about terroir, you’d better have something meaningful and demonstrable in your product and practice backing it up.

Bruichladdich would go on, under Renier’s era, to make some valiant efforts in its production practices to shore up the terroir marketing angle. Under the ownership of Remy, Bruichladdich’s language has evolved and the explicitness around terroir has softened; focus on sustainability, provenance and ‘thought provocation’ have all been given equal or more prominent focus. Perhaps we can interpret this evolution as a quiet admission that such an intensely ideological focus on terroir is challenging to maintain to its logical conclusion.

It is also often said that terroir is a choice, the wine grower can choose to step back and give it space, or she can choose to intervene to alter or delete its characteristics. It’s a tension between the natural effects of the land on a monoculture of vines and the judgement and human decision making of the wine grower. It is this idea of judgement and deliberate decision making that is most relevant and critical to Scotch Whisky as well. Terroir is bound up so deeply with French wine because it so often overlays effortlessly with the decisions which also lead to the greatest quality in the end product. The most lauded wines, also tend to vividly express terroir. In Scottish malt whisky production, can we say that the decision to pursue and allow room for terroir in the product are the same decisions that will lead to the finest possible quality whisky? I’m not convinced this is the case.

When I was in Japan back in February, Yumi Yoshikawa at Chichibu made a very simple but important point: sometimes they use barley from Scotland, sometimes from Japan, but they don’t use Japanese barley for the sake of it as it isn’t always the best quality. They want the best quality barley for making whisky. A similar way to think about it might be a theoretical decision around what yeast strain to use. If you want to make a whisky that expresses terroir, you might want to isolate a unique yeast strain from your local barley, or from a peat bog you cut from, but will it make better whisky than using a more classical yeast? In whisky, terroir does not necessarily equal quality.

So, does it follow that terroir in whisky is of less importance? That it belongs more to the remit of the marketeer and story spinners? I think it tells us that, if the whisky maker wants to legitimately discover, make space for and enshrine terroir in their product, then it must go hand in hand with quality as well. If you start a distillery with the foundational objective of expressing terroir, you will not really know the finer details of what character of whisky you’ll make, terroir is something that has to be discovered, then nurtured. Striking that balance while also navigating a pathway of decision making that elevates quality is a challenge.

If done correctly though, it also conveys a potent message that goes beyond whisky and becomes political. True pursuit of terroir in whisky making is limiting, which means it limits the capacity of your business to endlessly expand and grow. To truly express character from your immediate and natural environment, means accepting limitations, it means standing apart from the mass commercial approach to whisky making that sacrifices quality in the pursuit of yield, efficiency and stretches credibility to breaking point on pricing. It says: I accept a different business model; I accept a certain limit to growth; I am pursuing commercial success via the route of quality and value - at the expense of volume. This is perhaps one of the most important reasons why terroir can matter, but it hinges on being done correctly with a rather dogmatic and ideological attention to detail.

As soon as we interrogate terroir in whisky, it also throws up some challenging questions. What specifically is terroir in whisky, and how is it distinct from distillery character? For example, if you allow your site’s natural water resources to cool your distillate and you accept seasonal variation inherent in that, then is that character effect from cooling counted as a character of terroir or distillery character? If you chose to exert greater control over your distillate and you deploy technological means to maintain a uniform cooling profile all year round, does its effect transition from terroir characteristic to distillery character?

One of the strongest arguments for the existence of terroir in whisky, is when peat is used. After all, what is peat but the literal, physical land? Land immolated and adhered at a molecular level into the very building blocks of the whisky itself. There have been studies that show there are geographical-specific peat flavour characteristics in Scottish malt whisky. Even when a distillery like Springbank uses peat cut from Tomintoul (as they have in recent times), it could be argued they are still expressing a terroir, just that of Tomintoul, not Machrihanish. This is one of the effects of the centralisation of malting, the reduction in diversity of peat bogs used, leads to a homogenising effect on peated Scottish malt whiskies more broadly. Following that logic, does the use of new, or relatively active, American and European oaks invest those spirits with some terroir characteristics of the forests of origin where those trees grew? In my view, the great contradiction that sat at the heart of Bruichladdich and Waterford, was their use of wine casks. If you make all that noise about terroir character and barley, only to then fill into active wine casks, the logical underpinning of your guiding philosophy falls apart.

That’s the other political element of terroir. In the face of a climate crisis, and arguably a wider global ‘polycrisis’, the decisions that businesses take, and choose not to take, all carry meaning. If we can use an embrace of terroir to also make these sorts of luxury products, which make life enjoyable, more sustainable to produce, then this is broadly a good thing. It’s also a politically useful, even necessary, stance to have and one that will increasingly become essential in years to come. We turn our focus upon the natural and the local because we must and we should, but if it can also serve as a pathway to better products then this combination of purposes becomes one of the strongest answers as to why terroir can matter.

(To be continued…)

Angus's Corner
From our correspondent and skilled taster Angus MacRaild in Scotland
Illustrations, Serge's son, whose artist name is Darius Pronowski

Scotland’s edges appear ragged and torn, framed by the weathered scars of ancient and violent geology. Approaching from the softer innards of Fife and Perthshire, the land sparsens and tenses; you get a sense of Earth’s sinew and bone yearning against the membrane of landscape. Geological desire lines of rock, insisting their way to the surface, to exposure and light.

We drove the crooked spine of the A9 and A99 all the way to Gill’s Bay; beyond Inverness, through relentless Spring sunlight, everything was yellow splashes of Gorse facing the dazzling, ever-shifting blue of the North Sea. Broken up by fields of compelling green and the deeper greens of pine. As we pass Golspie, Brora and Helmsdale, those greens begin to mottle, phasing into peat and moorland, the Gorse yellows become intermittent, and a sense emerges of exposure and rawness. The land appears beaten, winnowed into low oppression by ancient channels of wind. Trees are fewer here, clustered into sheltered dips and furrows of the earth, those that grow in the open have yielded to the shape and will of the same winds that have raked this land since it was molten.

The shape of the language changes here too – Latheron, Lybster, Clythe, Thrumster – funny words without the romance or lyricism which we usually associate with the Scottish Highlands. Words that give a sense of older and different cultures, that speak something of the strangeness and starkness of the land they stand for. At Gill’s Bay the ferry breaks away from the exposed rock and strikes out towards Orkney. In this light the sea appears a vast and open plateau of quiet, sun-enriched blue, an expansive, modulating blue that plays with your vision and can change the way you think about an individual colour. The calm of the water is surreal; we’re aware that we drift across a resting beast capable of the almightiest fury.

Orkney emerges out of this unsettling blue surrealism: green and lolloping fields stitched between peatlands with drystone seams and smudges of mottled rock. It feels, in the immediate sense, like another world. Like so much of northern Scotland, however, amidst all this surface beauty and a serenity temporarily granted by the grace of Spring sunlight, it is possible to sense an emptiness, the disquiet of emptied lands – of a culture and people not so long ago decanted away to make space for sheep. Go to Lewis and the shape of the land might tell of a different geology, a different accent to the beauty, but the quiet absence is the same.

Spend a little more time, and everything becomes more cosmic and amusing: this is a land that eats everything! All we can do thus far, in the face of this slow digestion, is put up rocks. We can order them simply or with artifice and grandeur, but the entropy of the wind, the lichen and the bog at our feet make a mockery of it all in the end. You can feel these things on mainland Scotland, but on Orkney – the cradle of civilization in these British Isles – these things feel a little starker, a little more exposed and inescapable. It is a humbling place to be. It's also a place where it’s possible to feel ever so slightly more at ease with this ruthless impermanence.

As I write this, I’m drinking a Highland Park single malt. It is ten years old, distilled in 1999 and aged in a first-fill bourbon barrel. Its flavour makes me think of honey, it recalls heather and the sense of peat smoke somewhere in the background. It is sweet, but naturally so. I wonder if this distillate was tankered off the island to be filled and mature in a warehouse somewhere in central Scotland; is this the first time this (now) whisky has been back to Orkney since it was spirit off the still? Knowing a bit about whisky, you wonder these things. But these supposedly dissonant thoughts sit in odd comfort alongside drinking this whisky and thinking about flavours I associate with this land and this place: honey, heather, peat, coastal air…

On the journey up here, we stopped at Dornoch Castle for a night, a place I’ve tasted many of the whiskies made at the distilleries that dot the land we just travelled through. Pulteney and Balblair feel like sibling makes to me: sweeter, more bucolic distillates that inhabit the space between those yellow flushes of gorse and iridescent coastal blues. Clynelish, Ord and Dalmore feel like they belong to the more austere, exposed and stony parts of these lands, in my mind these are more muscular and weighty spirits, mineral, like the exposed, wind-hewn geology they sit upon.

To write about Scotland, and about its whiskies, in the way I just have is a choice. It’s a style frequented many times over the years by any number of writers. It’s a way of writing that tries desperately to be unromantic but fails nobly. There is probably good reason why we write this way, why we knit together the land and the whiskies that are made within and upon it, there is an instinctual urge to use the former to make sense of the latter, to use that awe-inspiring landscape as a narrative canvass in which to figuratively contextualise the whiskies that are literally made there. By the same token, there is a common and highly deliberate urge to uncouple these things – to drive the wedge of science and rationality between the land and the distillates and to rend them apart.

This is the argument that we’ve been having for at least three decades now: the argument about terroir, about whether it exists in Scotch whisky, and if so, to what extent? How do we discern it? How do we refute it? I have been continually fascinated by the conversation, but I haven’t written much about it myself. The recent misfortunes that have befallen Waterford in Ireland, and this holiday I’ve taken to Orkney, have both made me think once again about terroir and its place in whisky. I believe that, amidst all the bluster that swirls about this subject, what is missed is not if terroir exists in whisky, or if it can exist, but whether terroir matters at all? If it does matter, then why? I do not intend to fully litigate the case for or against terroir’s existence in whisky, although, there will need to be some discussion of this, and I should say, in my view, terroir can and does exist in some spirits. What I believe is more interesting is why we discuss terroir in whisky at all…

(To be continued…)