Robbie Burns’ distillery
The Globe in Dumfries is the town’s oldest inn. The present building dates from 1610, and contains precious relics of Scotland and Dumfries’s greatest poet: Robbie Burns. Upstairs there is a little Burns room, containing a four-poster bed (a vital piece of equipment for Burns) some sticks of furniture dating from that time while a couple of his poems are engraved on the window panes in a beautiful copperplate hand.
I was at the Globe to attend a special dinner organised by the Drambusters’ Club run by the local wine merchant TB Watson Ltd. The guest of honour was Professor David Thomson, another Dumfries man and, as it happens, owner of the Globe. He is also the proprietor of the Annandale Distillery, and we were drinking his malt with the meal.
Thomson is a fascinating man. An academic chemist, he started life in cereals and graduated to flavour; he then submitted his doctorate on applied psychology, specialising in brands. He and his wife Teresa Church own MMR Research Worldwide, a successful consultancy that advises companies on their products. It was with the profits from MMR Research that he was able to buy Annandale and the Globe.
Thomson acquired the Annandale Distillery (pictured) in 2007. It had been constructed in 1830, and was mothballed by Johnny Walker Ltd in 1918. Long relegated to a mere farm building, it is a handsome red sandstone distillery of the farmhouse type, still boasting its “Doig” pagoda which indicated the presence of a peat-fuelled kiln to dry the malt for whisky production. It took seven years to kit the distillery out and produce some spirit.
One of the best of many stories Thomson tells of that time relates to the location of the water source by an Aberdeenshire farmer with a dowser. He estimated the source to be some ninety metres below the warehouse. Thomson says they brought in a drill and set to work, but nothing but earth came up until they hit 90 metres, at which point the earth gave way to the most limpid water.
Thomson was guided by one of whisky’s great pioneers: Dr Jim Swan, who sadly died in 2017 before the first Annandale whisky was released. On the basis of the historical evidence relating to four former distilleries in the area, it was decided to make a pungent, peaty whisky, going against the grain or rather the accepted version governing Lowland malts: that they are all bland, un-peated and triple-distilled. The peaty whisky would be the “Man O’ Swords”, a reference to one local worthy: Robert the Bruce; while an un-peated version would be called the “Man O’ Words” — who was naturally Burns.
As Thomson’s Annandale malt was unlikely to be used for commercial fillings of blended whisky and because he did not want to finance the ageing of the spirit by producing gin, the whisky has been made available as a very young malt. Customers may buy entire casks which can be stored until the whisky is needed; otherwise Annandale whisky can be acquired from specialists or from their website.
They make about 45 casks a week. The whisky is bottled at cask strength (roughly 60 degrees ABV) barrel by barrel, without being “assembled”. This means each cask has its own distinct character. Annandale uses two small wash stills to feed a single spirits still, which performs the second distillation. This, he says, encourages reflux to give a whisky a fruitiness that will show earlier and ensures minimal sulphur, which also renders the whisky slow to mature.
Thomson releases the spirit when he believes it to have achieved “sensory maturity”, which could be anything over three years. He wants to bring out the fruity, cream soda character of the malt. Whiskies are commercialised when they achieve a balance, either of peat, fruit and sweetness — in the Man O’ Swords; or fruit and sweetness in the Man O’ Words. Whiskies destined for early release like this benefit from STR (shaved-toasted-re-charred) Bourbon casks rinsed with wine or sherry, which impart their character more quickly than traditional vessels like sherry butts. STR casks are another invention of Jim Swan’s. If it’s under four years of age, the spirit is not legally whisky, but Thomson also sells a lovely colourless “rascally liquor” (Burns’ phrase again). The peaty version of this makes the best whisky sours I’ve ever had.
Burns was the exciseman in nearby Annan responsible for summoning up the dragoons to close down the many illicit stills, but he was clearly playing a double game, as his famous poem, “The Deils awa’ wi’ the Exciseman” might suggest:
The deil cam fiddlin’ thro’ the town,
And danc’d awa wi’ th’ Exciseman…
We’ll mak our maut, and we’ll brew our drink…
We’ll laugh, sing, and rejoice, man…”
Thomson believes there was a still at Annandale, which lies in a natural bowl hidden from the road. And there was almost certainly whisky made before Burns’ successor, the exciseman George Burns, formally licensed the distillery in 1830.
David Thomson has achieved a good deal in bringing the Annandale malt back to life, but he has a remaining ambition: he wants to make a Lowland malt using both the abundant local peat and barley from Burns’ own Ellisland Farm, just as they did it in George Donald’s time. It would be the first malt for decades to subscribe to the rules applied to Europe’s protected appellations.
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