Scotland Wrap Up

I am back in France, however, I was not able to bring you fully up-to-speed on Whiskey making and the OXO Line that we installed. First of all, the Arran Distillery has only been in existence sine 1995, so they are just now able to produce high quality Scotch Whiskey. It was very strategically placed to be able to use a stream’s water that is supposed to have the perfect sweetness and balance for Scotch. It was said a little more than one hundred years ago that because of the water the isle of Arran made the best illegal whiskey (the taxes were so high that there were only about a handful of legal distilleries in Scotland). According to the Scottish, Scotland in general has the “perfect” climate for making Whiskey because the temperature never really changes –– even in the summer it was cold half the day and rained a little bit –– so the Arran Distillery is perfectly sited for making great Scotch Whiskey. The distillery uses 100% traditional methods like non-chill filtering and fermenting the mash with Oregon pine in the tank. Whiskey is distilled twice, which is traditional for scotch and, surprisingly, when it comes out of the second distillation the liquid is clear. Scotch only gains its flavor and color from agingin in barrels. Here's where America comes in: the barrels are bought from Jack Daniels, Jim Beam and other bourbon whiskey makers in America who, by law, can only use oak barrels once for whiskey. So, it is a good deal for the scotch whiskey makers who buy their old barrels that give flavor and other characteristics to the scotch whiskey. They also buy port, cognac, wine, sherry and other alcohol barrels to make what they call Cask Strength. This means that for the last nine months the whiskey is moved from bourbon barrels to one of these other barrels which gives the scotch some different flavors and complexities that were found in the last alcohol. Cask Strength also has a higher alcohol content than the regular single malt.

Now for OXO Line 2. To my understanding the Whiskey industry has trouble with stacking their barrels, so the new stacking structure could potentially be the cure-all. OXO Line 2 is a metal structure, holding the barrels with metal leaves that stick out of big poles that are bolted into the cement. This is a horrible description -- but hopefully the picture will give you a better idea of the structure! It is not very hard to build, but since we installed about 3,000 units it was a lot of work.

It felt good to be done and be on the ferry headed to Glasgow for a night before we caught our early morning flight to London and then back to France. Glasgow was fun, we checked out the night life. The feeling of being done and seeing more then ten people in a night was just what we all needed. It is now the weekend here in France and I am not sure what we are going to do, but I am ok with doing nothing.
--Drew