Words by Johanna Ngoh
Photography by Keith Hunter
Haters gonna hate. It stood to reason as widespread hysteria gripped whisky nerds in 2007 upon news that Diageo Plc, Scotland’s largest distiller, was building a high-volume ‘plant’ with an annual capacity of ten million litres – double the size of Dufftown, at the time its largest distillery. Quickly dubbed ‘Speyside’s Deathstar’, it was evidence of what the peanut gallery had suspected all along, of a commercial agenda to streamline production and return maximum dividends to shareholders while sacrificing character in the world’s most stately and noble spirit. Roseisle would be about ‘assets’, ‘rationalisation’ and ‘output’; about producing a malt that bends to the blender’s will with its creaseless forehead, a malt that brooks no argument, puts up no fight. Aye, the end times were nigh indeed.
Fast forward ten years and we find ourselves well and truly lost along the Moray coast, so well hidden is Scotland’s version of Area 51. We stop to consult Google Maps which leads us to a cluster of industrial structures surrounded on all sides by open fields, its perimeter lined by a hedgerow of trees – a bucolic and pastoral setting for such a monument of technological wonder, we all agree. Upon arrival we are outfitted with hard hats and seated before a screen that lights up with the contrabass of James Earl Jones affecting his best Scottish burr: “Roseisle. A new distillery to set the standard for the modern age.” It is heartening to learn during our short briefing that traditional mysticism still has a place in the modern age, and Roseisle has not one but two spirit animals, a duck and a fish, courtesy of nearby Pictish stones.
Nary but two souls operate the facility (five shifts per day, seven days per week), and we are encouraged to leave our personal belongings behind (no one around to nick them), before being ushered through the mashtuns (twenty-five tonnes per mash) and washbacks (fourteen in total, with a capacity of 115,000 litres apiece), accompanied by a monologue on Roseisle’s environmental cred (biomass, CO2 recovery, membrane filtration, anaerobic digestion) mostly indecipherable, but reassuring to hear in these climate-conscious times.
Entering the stillroom is nothing short of thrilling, a marvel of engineering and modernisation, its gleaming expanse of copper inducing a sharp intake of breath, and the portentous feeling of ‘Behold, the only thing greater than yourself’. It is a cathedral of automation and efficiency and process, and on the eighth day God surely tasted its new make and found it to be Good, nay, Great, and He was no doubt satisfied with this testament to the achievement of Man on Earth.
Equipped with seven wash stills and seven spirit stills fashioned in-house at Abercrombie, we learn that Roseisle was ‘reverse-engineered’ to reproduce any profile within Diageo’s portfolio of twenty-eight distilleries – ‘grassy’, ‘fruity’, ‘sulphury’ etc – save ‘waxy’, the much vaunted thumbprint of Clynelish that continues to elude modern science. While its output thus far has largely been ‘grassy’, ‘heavy’ and ‘peated’ are well within Roseisle’s purview should the likes of Caol Ila or Mortlach be taken offline. The modern age has rendered the traditional spirit safe irrelevant, and we take advantage of a sight-glass in the pipes to observe the new make being pumped from the stills to holding tanks, where it awaits transport to Diageo’s numerous warehousing facilities.
A control room sits aloft and here we are greeted by Andy, Peter and three samples of Roseisle’s matured whisky, including an eight year old from a refill sherry butt, a rich and creamy malt that crushes the Lagavulin 8 Year Old in body, mouthfeel and finish. So much so that it was entered in last year’s race for ‘Manager’s Dram’, an annual competition whereby each of the company’s twenty-eight distilleries puts forth their best cask sample, the winner to be bottled and sold to staff. That this Roseisle 8 Year Old placed second is a beacon of hope for the distillery’s human overseers, keen to see their work bottled on its own. We concur. All’s well that blends well. Luddites need not apply.