Billy Walker, The Rum Whisky Man

After fifty years within the enterprise, Speyside’s Grasp whisky blender and winner of the World’s Greatest Single Malt on the 2021 World Whiskies Awards, business legend Billy Walker has needed to radically re-think his tasting notes, refresh his shade descriptions and radically overhaul his nosing vocabulary.

Now he’s speaking “golden sunrises” and “golden barley” and “lashings of pineapple, smoked plantains and cinnamon, with vanilla, butterscotch, and smoked Caribbean jerky, bursting with ripe bananas, fried banana chips, honey, and strawberry coulis.” As a result of now he’s speaking rum. Small-batch and boutique.

Below its new “Macnair’s Boutique Home of Spirits” label, the independently owned and managed spirits agency, The GlenAllachie Distillers Firm, had launched Exploration Rum Jamaica Peated and Unpeated so as to add to its 2021 Panama rum vary.

Walker selected Jamaica’s Clarendon Distillery one of many island’s oldest sugar cane plantations and subjected its rum to a equally advanced and modern maturation course of.

“Every thing we do is targeted on endeavor an enhanced maturation course of to ship an optimum ingesting expertise.”

Exploring the distinctive interplay between the GlenAllachie spirit and various kinds of oak cask, every of Walker’s whisky expressions has its personal distinctive DNA.

They’re aged in quite a lot of finishes- wooden, virgin oak, sherry butt, bourbon barrel, and wine cask. His 32-year-old Pedro Ximénez puncheon has heat glazed fig and “cuddly mocha” notes whereas White Heather 21-Yr-Previous is the results of a mixture of Pedro Ximénez and Oloroso puncheons and Appalachian virgin oak casks.

His new rums aren’t any completely different.

“I purposefully obtained spirit at excessive, medium, and low ester ranges so as to obtain a large number of taste attributes from the wooden.”

“Exploring a brand new spirits class has been an especially gratifying new problem. Bringing the rums straight to GlenAllachie Distilleryat Aberlour on the foot of Ben Rinnes to be absolutely aged below our supervision within the cool Speyside local weather has created a completely distinctive taste expertise, our purpose is to push the boundaries of conference to develop eclectic, modern rums for the curious and adventurous shopper,

“Parallels may be drawn between the rum and whisky classes. They each are subjected to scrupulously supervised fermentation and distillation procedures, every step rigorously thought-about so as to generate the specified organoleptic traits. They each make the most of maturation in wooden as a technique of taste improvement.”

Walker felt the ‘craft’ facet of rum-making was “not being engaged with strongly sufficient.” Inventive wooden administration was introduced into play.

After preliminary maturation in American oak within the tropical Panamanian local weather, the molasses-based spirit was transferred to the a lot cooler growing older atmosphere at The GlenAllachie Distillery. The 7-Yr-Previous and 15-Yr-Previous have been moved to ex-Bourbon, purple wine, and virgin oak for an extra two years. The 7-Yr-Previous Peated remained in casks that beforehand held peated spirit distilled at The GlenAllachie.

“It’s our intention to proceed on an experimental journey, utilizing non-traditional cask sorts and growing older processes to place our personal stamp on the premium rums we rigorously choose from around the globe.”

Glenallachie additionally makes Macnair’s “Lum Reek” whiskies (blends of Islay and Speyside) named after the previous Scottish saying, “Lang might yer lum reek” or “lengthy might your chimney smoke”, a standard solution to want somebody an extended, wholesome and affluent life.