Nestled in a beautifully wild corner of north-east Scotland, the Glenfiddich distillery is a place where patience is part and parcel of everyday life.
“Most companies think about planning for the next quarter, but we think about planning for 50 and 60 years from now,” smiles Kirsten Grant, a descendant of William Grant who founded Glenfiddich in Dufftown, Speyside in 1887. “This business is not about quick decisions.”
Brian Kinsman, who has held the wonderful job title of Malt Master since 2009, joined the company in 1996. “The chances of me seeing a product from start to finish are relatively small,” he says wistfully. “This job is about legacy, looking after the heritage, the history and the quality. It’s about laying things down for the future. Family is key to what we do here.”
At a sumptuous dinner of beef wellington, Kinsman reveals Glenfiddich’s Archive Collection, a limited range of 17 whiskys for release in April 2024, which includes a drop he has handpicked from 1989 that will be available exclusively to UAE customers. While the Soviet Union was breaking up and David Hasselhoff was singing about freedom on the Berlin Wall, Kinsman’s predecessors were carefully pouring liquid into a treated barrel made of American oak that would, 35 years later, produce 189 bottles of priced at approx AED 25,000.
Kinsman describes an aroma of sweet pea, jasmine and summer fruits before suggesting a flavour of toffee, candy floss, spice and cloves. He can’t use grooming products because the fragrance impairs his ability to critique what he’s tasting. He laughs, “It’s actually quite hard to find non-fragranced deodorant!”
George Paterson is a warehouseman at Glenfiddich and assisted in the tasting of the Archive Collection’s UAE edition. A keen music lover, Paterson likes to listen to an era-appropriate soundtrack while doing his work. “When I was tasting the 1989 cask I was listening to bands from the Manchester scene like Stone Roses, Inspiral Carpets, and The Smiths,” he says. “It was very nostalgic for me because I was at high school in 1989 and beginning to build my record collection. I was having lovely wee flashbacks to that time.”
Satisfied with its quality, Paterson sent the 1989 Archive Collection cask on its way. Kinsman takes up the story. “There’s a beauty to a single cask with its own unique history,” he says. “How did the tree grow? How was the wood dried? How was the cask coopered? How did it come to the distillery? These casks are one-offs, they are literally all different and each one has a story to tell.” Glenfiddich’s global brand ambassador Struan Grant Ralph sums it up neatly by saying, “Every cask is a fingerprint.”
At the time of Esquire Middle East’s visit to Speyside, a region known as the heartland of single malt, Glenfiddich has around 1.2 million casks on site in 47 warehouses. In charge of these flavour– and colour–giving casks is master cooper Ian McDonald, who joined Glenfiddich in 1969 as a 15-year-old apprentice. Watching him align slats of oak – or staves – inside a metal hoop and then smashing them into position with a metal hammer is a ballet of precision and power. “When I was a boy I used to enjoy coming down here and watching the coopers make barrels,” says McDonald. “At school I was good at metalwork and woodwork, so coopering seemed like a good job for me. I still get satisfaction from making a cask.”
One man who’s been at Glenfiddich even longer than McDonald is coppersmith Dennis McBain, who began his training at the distillery in 1958 and is the company’s longest serving craftsman. “The size and shape of the still, in my opinion, is very important,” says McBain. “The stills have a distinct bearing to the character of the liquid.”
Having people like McBain and McDonald around to pass on their considerable knowledge to the next generation is crucial for Glenfiddich and the industry as a whole. Kirsten Grant represents the sixth generation of owners and feels huge responsibility to not only preserve the heritage of Glenfiddich but also prepare the company for many more tomorrows. “We can’t screw it up on our watch,” she says matter-of-factly. “The family never feels that we own the business, we are just custodians passing it on. A lot of what we do, we’ll never see come to life, it’s all about longevity.”
Kirsten’s great-grandfather, Charles Grant, was the youngest son of the company’s founder William Grant. She had a successful career in the wine business but was persuaded to join the family firm in 2010 by her uncle Charlie Gordon, who was then president of the William Grant & Sons company. She takes Esquire Middle East on a chilly stroll around the distillery grounds and points out a duck pond with steam coming off the surface. “That’s where the warm water from the stills drains out,” she explains. “The ducks love it – it’s like a Jacuzzi for them.”
Back at the recently built stillhouse and its 16 gleaming, giant copper stills arranged in two rows of eight, we meet the dreadlocked, kilt-wearing Andy Fairgrieve, a walking encyclopedia of Glenfiddich who spends his days in the archive building. His eyes twinkle with excitement as he tells the story of an 80-year-old Scotsman from Edinburgh who contacted him in November 2023 about an intriguing discovery he had made. “This gentlemen found a ledger that his father had kept from his time working at a customs and excise office from the 1930s to the 1950s. The ledger belonged to Glenfiddich and was dated December 16, 1887 – which was the day before William Grant took out his distillery license! I went to see it the very next day. He didn’t want any payment for it, he just wanted to pass it on. I couldn’t believe it. To me, this was Howard Carter, Tutankhamun stuff, you know?”
Adjusting his dreadlocks, Fairgrieve continues, “The archive gives you answers but also more questions. We just want to make sure that when we close the door at the end of the day, it’ll be there for someone to open tomorrow. I think that procession of history is important because, ultimately, whisky is a human story.”