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 coloration 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.

Underneath 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 complicated and modern maturation course of.

“All the pieces we do is concentrated on enterprise an enhanced maturation course of to ship an optimum ingesting expertise.”

Exploring the distinctive interplay between the GlenAllachie spirit and several types 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 with the intention 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 very distinctive taste expertise, our goal is to push the boundaries of conference to develop eclectic, modern rums for the curious and adventurous shopper,

“Parallels might be drawn between the rum and whisky classes. They each are subjected to scrupulously supervised fermentation and distillation procedures, every step fastidiously thought-about with the intention to generate the specified organoleptic traits. They each make the most of maturation in wooden as a way of taste growth.”

Walker felt the ‘craft’ facet of rum-making was “not being engaged with strongly sufficient.” Artistic 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 getting older setting at The GlenAllachie Distillery. The 7-Yr-Previous and 15-Yr-Previous had been moved to ex-Bourbon, crimson wine, and virgin oak for a further 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 getting older processes to place our personal stamp on the premium rums we fastidiously choose from world wide.”

Glenallachie additionally makes Macnair’s “Lum Reek” whiskies (blends of Islay and Speyside) named after the outdated Scottish saying, “Lang could yer lum reek” or “lengthy could your chimney smoke”, a standard approach to want somebody an extended, wholesome and affluent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