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From the early 1970s
Scotland's distilleries gradually started to transfer
some of their most important production processes
to external suppliers, from whom they receive
standard ingredients that no longer reflect local
traditions and distictions. Artisan distilling
slowly became an industry, and at the end of the
1980s only five traditional distilleries remained,
together with five others using the Saladin method,
a semi-artisan malting process. There are now
only three of these distilleries. Unless
distilleries return to artisan
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production,
in the very near future great Scotch whiskies will
have to be assembled. Excellence can come only from
the skilful blending of different malt whiskies,
which can no longer be selected from the single
areas, as in the past, but that must be obtained
by collecting stocks at different stages of ageing,
each of which imparts its own characteristics and
richness. Ageing is in fact a process that is totally
natural, something that cannot and never will be
rationalised. |
