The whisky world is defined by its regional idiosyncrasies. Islay, Tennessee or Speyside are as much signifiers of style as they are locations on an atlas. In times of yore, regional identities were a default – knowledge, resources and equipment didn’t travel far back then – but now, when all the world’s information has been shrunk down to the size of a phone screen, does regionality hold the relevance it once did?
That’s not to say distinct regional styles aren’t still the norm. Japanese whisky may have modelled itself on the distilleries of Scotland but now the country has long-produced characterful spirits that are categorically distinct from their initial inspiration – examples where the base spirit may actually come from Fort William notwithstanding. The same can be said for Taiwan, India, Australia and essentially anywhere that the late Dr Jim Swan had a stamp in his passport.
Taking inspiration from admired styles and translating them through a local lens is an approach adopted at the James Sedgwick Distillery in Wellington, South Africa, where master distiller and former professional cricketer Andy Watts heads up production of the country’s two most celebrated whisky brands – Three Ships and Bain’s Cape Mountain.
Stylistically, the two brands are unique – Bain’s is a single grain whisky made from yellow maize and matured in first fill bourbon casks, and Three Ships has a broad portfolio of blends and single malts – but both wear their inspirations on their sleeves and are unmistakably South African.
Take Three Ships Five Year Old, a blend of South African and Scottish malt and grain whiskies that sits in the brand’s core portfolio. “It was first produced in 1991 as a tribute to Andy Watts’ time spent on Islay, where he fell in love with peated whisky and wanted to incorporate something like that into our whiskies,” says Walters Uys, lead of spirits excellence at Heineken Beverages, which owns Bain’s and Three Ships.
“The Three Ships Five has that complex peat character but with also the smoothness and sweetness of grain, and I think that makes it ideal for the African market.”
Watts took a similar approach when creating Bain’s. In 1994, after the fall of Apartheid and the first democratic elections in South Africa, international brands began to return to the country. He saw the success of Jameson and Jack Daniel’s and wanted to create a whisky which took the smoothness of Irish whiskey and combined it with the sweet, rounded character of bourbon.
“You need to know your market and know your consumer but then give them something local,” says Uys. “The idea wasn’t to mimic Jameson or Jack Daniel’s, but to work on a base of what the consumer already loves and develop something that’s unique to South Africa. We use 100% yellow maize and first fill bourbon casks for maturation purposes just to get character and complexity into the final profile.”
Three Ships’ Master’s Collection, an annual limited-edition range of cask finishes, takes this philosophy further by pairing the brand’s whiskies with casks that regularly speak to their provenance. Previous releases have seen its whiskies finished in characteristically South African casks like Chenin Blanc, Pinotage, Shiraz and, most recently, Cape Ruby alongside international classics like PX, oloroso and American oak.
“Our Master’s Collection, which is small volumes of around 1,000 to 3,000 bottles per annum, is all about innovation,” says Uys. “It’s where we play around with single malts and blends, and offer something different beyond our core range.
“We don’t just want to produce volumes and volumes to have it spread around the world, we want to maintain quality. We’ve developed the core range and our limited-edition releases to have a portfolio for different palates and different tastes so consumers can find what they like. We’re not in the process of running after different international markets and what they need – we want to go to markets with what we’ve built up, what we know is good quality and what represents South Africa.”
Finding inspiration
But there are places for nascent producers to find inspiration outside of the heritage of whisky. It’s a given that anyone creating a new whisky distillery would be a whisky fan first so naturally would gravitate towards existing, preferred styles, but at Finland’s Kyrö, there’s not such a clearly traceable lineage of influence like we see in other budding world whisky producers.
“We want to enrich whisky culture with whatever we can contribute,” says Kyrö master distiller Kalle Valkonen.
“Rye is a quintessentially Finnish grain, so that was an easy choice. In Scandinavia, we love smoky flavours, it’s a big part of Finnish food and agriculture, so for our smoked whiskies, we’ve modified a traditional drying method that has been used for centuries, so we’re bringing a bit of Finnish culinary culture to whisky culture.
“I’ve also been a bit critical of whisky provenance but then I realised in hindsight, that’s what we’re doing. Using 100% rye in the mash bill the same way we do in our baking and having an expression where we dry the rye over alderwood fire, these are old Finnish traditions that are being kept alive.
The distillery has made waves in the whisky world since launching its first bottling in 2019. In the following years, it’s appeared multiple times in Drinks International’s The World’s Most Admired Whiskies list and released numerous core and experimental bottlings.
“With a distillery that’s just starting, experimentation isn’t just about having fun, it’s also de-risking,” says Mikko Koskinen, head of the Kyrö central marketing team.
“It gives us more colours in our palette to paint with. We have a core range of four whiskies and then a steady output of special expressions where we want to stretch the limits of rye and do things that aren’t common in rye whisky.
“We don’t have the heritage of whisky making but we feel like we’re building on top of existing local heritage to give justification to what we do and to make it understandable.
“We recently released a sauna finish, which again is pushing the boundaries, but in a way that we feel we're justified to do. If you think of the world of whisky a big potluck and everybody brings something local to the table, that's what I think we're doing while pushing the boundaries, having fun and without compromising quality.”
Kyrö released Sauna Stories to celebrate the distillery’s 10th anniversary. It sees its rye whisky finished in Planteray rum casks that are heated to around 50°C inside a specially built sauna. As Koskinen says, if anyone is justified to produce a whisky matured in a sauna, it’s the Finnish whisky brand that was born after a conversation in one.
Playing the field
Part of the beauty of world whisky is that there are fewer ties and responsibilities to produce whisky in any one prescribed style.
Take London’s Doghouse Distillery, which has recently announced its debut whisky. Debt Collector has a mash bill of 75% corn, 17% malted barley and 8% rye, and is aged for three years in Kentucky-sourced virgin American oak casks – sound familiar?
At Doghouse Distillery, the team is proudly making a bourbon in every sense bar name and location.
“I love bourbon,” says co-founder and managing director Braden Saunders. “The Scots do scotch so well, and they've been doing it for centuries, what do we have to add to that given that we’re not that far away? If I was in eastern Europe, sure a Scotch-style whisky would be interesting to me, but in London I don’t have that same feeling. I think making something multigrain, taking inspiration from America, is much more interesting to me.”
Of course, it’s not the first time that corn has been used in whisky production in the British Isles, and while wheat is the go-to cereal nowadays after EU benefits made it less expensive, maize has long been used as a base of Scotch grain whisky production – but stylistically, these whiskies aren’t taking many cues from the American corn belt.
“High corn produces an easy, mellow whisky,” continues Saunders. “I look at cocktails. Almost none are made with Scotch but bourbon is everywhere, so I think it’s much more approachable and inclusive in that sense.
“When I see another new English whisky producer making single malt, I think that’s a bit boring. I’m trying to do something new but, rather than looking to Scotland, I’m taking inspiration from hundreds of years of industry in the US. We’re in London, it’s a free place, there are no rules and I think in the future we’re just going to see more and more of this kind of exploration from distillers.”
Saunders’ approach has parallels in the wine industry. Much to the irritation of portions of the south east of England and more so the north east of France, English sparkling wine takes the techniques and most of the varieties of Champagne and moves it 200 miles north. Or take the Super Tuscans, Bordeaux varieties matured in French oak that were once derided but are now some of Italy’s most prized wines.
To all intents and purposes, these are examples of homages to specific existing heritage – the independent variable here is location and that makes these products representations of their unique space.
As Kyrö’s approach draws from non-whisky cultural heritage, or Three Ships passes inspiration through its own geographical lens by keeping so much of Debt Collector familiar, it reveals what makes the whisky produced at Doghouse Distillery different. Of course, certain market classifications remain in place, but given that modern distilleries don’t have the same onus as their predecessors to conform to style, the world’s whisky culture has never been richer.
