For Peat’s Sake
Cigar lovers are well aware of the time and patience necessary for a handmade smoke to be enjoyed. Between growing, curing and aging, it may take years before the leaves are ready to be set aflame. Well, Scotch whisky makers may indeed think, “What’s the hurry?” The process that gives their spirit its tell-tale smoky notes began more than a millennium ago.
The smoldering flavors in Scotch whiskies come from peat, partially decayed vegetable matter born in a bog, a type of wetland created by poor drainage. After thousands of years of decomposing, drying out and compacting, peat can be dug up and burned. Blessed with more than four million acres of peatlands, canny Scots have long used it for fuel, particularly in the barley-drying process required for making Scotch. Being carbon-rich, the burning blocks of peat waft phenols, which attach to the grain in a loving, long-lasting embrace. Their insistent flavor makes it through fermentation and distillation to become part of the final product.
From blended Scotch to the single malts of the five (depending on who’s counting) distilling regions of rugged Scotland, almost all of the country’s whiskies to some degree taste of peat. Usually, it comes in mere wisps of smoke, but one region, Islay, is known for its overwhelming smoky malts. These whiskies are among the most beloved by Scotch connoisseurs.
It is not a coincidence that the island off the west coast of Scotland known as Islay (pronounced EYE-luh) is famous for peaty whisky. It’s a virtual hotbed of peat. You fairly sink into the soft turf when you tread its bogs. As such, it’s historically been the source of much of the peat used in whisky making. Furthermore, a handful of distilleries there make malts that contribute to much of the smoky flavor in blends. When tasted on their own, the heavily peated whiskies have been described—even by those who don’t appreciate the smoke—in such unflattering as sooty, tarry, seaweed, iodine, even rubber. For those who love it, such complimentary notes as campfire smoke, toasted marshmallow and brine abound.
Calem Fraser, the chief blender for Scotch at Beam Suntory, says peaty Scotch is manning the steering wheel in the fast-growing Scotch category. “I think Scotch, as a whole, and single malts, in particular, are getting more popular,” he says, “and peat is very much the driving force.”
Such is the demand for peaty single malt that Chivas Brothers, a vast network of blended Scotches that use their own share of peat, announced in October that it would build a new distillery on Islay to focus on making a smoky single malt.
The reason shouldn’t come as a surprise to cigar smokers. Hidden in all that smoke, peat enthusiasts can detect the charms of fruits, nuts, bread dough and spice. And therefore peaty expressions are always in demand, either as single malts or components in blends.
“We simply don’t have enough stock to deal with the needs of the various expressions. We really should be producing more based on the future,” Fraser says of his company, an international whisky giant. Among the many distilleries that Beam Suntory owns are Islay’s Laphroaig and Bowmore.
It doesn’t take much peat to make an impression in a bottle of good Scotch. The phenol content in whisky is measured in parts per million. Ardbeg, Lagavulin and Laphroaig—the Islay triumvirate that comprises the most notoriously smoky Scotches in the world—come in at phenol levels between 40 and 50 ppm. Even at that miniscule amount they taste like smoke bombs. But one Islay neighbor, Bruichladdich, has been testing the outer limits of smoke. In the last 15 years, it has created a series of releases called Octomore, which is considered the smokiest of all whiskies. In 2017, one of its examples—Octomore 8.3—sextupled the peat content of its closest Islay competition at 309 ppm.
“People are acquiring that taste for peat and they are looking for it. It’s like the holy grail of single malts,” says Adam Hannett, the head distiller of Bruichladdich. He adds, however, that Octomore began as something of an experiment.
A little explanation is in order. A few distilleries still use floor maltings, the traditional method of drying barley with smoke. You spread the wet grain on a flat, concrete surface and rake it while peat smoke arises from below to dry it. But today, most distilleries contract grain maltsters who use a kiln to do the job more efficiently. Laphroaig and Bowmore each have their own floor maltings. But not far away, Port Ellen Maltings prepares grain for most of Islay’s nine distilleries in kilns. The facility is run by Diageo, the multinational spirits company that also owns two Islay distilleries—Caol Ila and Lagavulin—and creates the peaty Scotch blend Johnnie Walker. Floor maltings offer fine-tuning of grain. Maltsters are more efficient and consistent. (Even Laphroaig and Bowmore use them for a portion of their barley.)
When Bruichladdich, which had famously been a peat-abstaining Islay distiller, chose to get into smoky whisky, it approached Bairds Malt in Inverness on the other side of the country. That maltster was peating at much higher levels than would make it to the bottle. Customers would use those maltings to make extremely smoky whisky which they would then mingle with unpeated malts to achieve the desired level. Bruichladdich, known for its willingness to experiment, decided to go full bore. When you pour Octomore, you can smell the smoke at arm’s length, but the malts are surprisingly delicate on the tongue.
An anomaly of peaty Scotch is that it loses its smokiness under long periods of maturation in wood casks. An eight-year-old Islay expression will be far peatier than its 25-year-old big brother. Fraser says that is because the barrel implies its own flavors to the whisky, balancing out the taste. For Hannett, that effect is the reason that Octomore is bottled at the relatively young age of five years in a market where malts usually break in at twice that age. “It’s all about quality distillation first,” he says. “When you have that it doesn’t need 10, 15, 20 years to mature.”
However, the time a peaty Scotch spends in a wood cask is nothing compared with how long it took to create the peat itself. And that is a source of concern. Because of the thousands of years it takes bogs to regenerate it has been widely feared that peat would soon disappear from mother Scotland. One study even set a date for when the peat would be completely depleted: 2021.
News flash: it didn’t happen. Even so, conservative estimates have set the depletion of peat at a couple of hundred years from now. Accordingly, sales of bagged peat compost for gardening have been curtailed in the United Kingdom. While Hannett points out that the whisky industry uses only about 1 percent of the nation’s peat, he still voices concern that one day a peat shortage will affect the great-grandchildren of Islay, a bucolic place very much dedicated to the sustainability of its vast ecosystem.
For their parts, both Beam Suntory and Diageo have partnered with the Royal Society for Protection of Birds in an initiative to protect peatland habitats. The program is proactive in increasing peatland rather than just slowing depletion, explains Fraser. “It is actually positive,” he says, “rather than just balancing the use of peat.” Restoration involves creating the conditions for peat to regenerate. Mimicking the physical conditions of a bog involves maintaining the right pH and water levels as well as starving of the area of oxygen.
That last part may seem harsh, but it’s all for the good. Or as Fraser says: “At the end of the day whisky is a fun and fantastic business to be in.”
