Single Malt Whisky: To Age or Not to Age?

Scottish distillers are getting more playful with what they add to their whiskies and how long they leave them in the cask

By David Kiley

Bill Lumsden, the head of distilling and whiskey creation for Moët-Hennessy Louis Vuitton's (LVMH.PA) Glenmorangie and Ardbeg single-malt whiskies is a character. Not that the whisky business isn't full of creative, irascible, intriguing folks in charge of keeping our glasses filled. But having played a preposterous party game with Lumsden and others until 3 a.m. one night last May and drank from the spring that supplies Glenmorangie, I feel confident that Lumsden will have no problem getting his portion of the angel's share of whisky when he is in heaven.

Like any good distiller, Lumsden loves to play with aging his whiskies in different kinds of woods and fooling about with the mash mix. He is relentlessly curious about flavor in his whisky expressions without resorting to simple aging in oak. "I refuse to be slave to long aging when it comes to creating premium, exciting products," Lumsden told me during my recent trip to Glenmorangie in Tain, a breathtaking spot on the east coast of Scotland where poets and lovers of the sea and honey-like whisky will think they had died and gone to heaven

He has a point. Blended whiskies get along without putting an age statement on their highest volume products. The consistency of taste of, say, Pernod Ricard's (PERP.PA) Chivas Regal or Diageo's (DEO) Johnnie Walker is what makes them great and successful. That consistency is achieved by blending sometimes up to 50 single malt and grain whiskeys from as many distilleries. Single-malt distilleries like Glenmorangie blend only their own whiskies to achieve their expressions.

Glenmorangie has just released Signet from Lumsden's laboratory, a non-age stated audacious expression that will run you $185 for a 750 ml bottle. No age statement? The nerve! Is it worth it? I'd have to say, yes.

Blended Whiskies

Lumsden, who was still being mysterious about the product last May when we spoke, said it would be a "voluptuous" product. Voluptuous? That makes me think of chocolate, not whisky. But therein lies the secret. Lumsden, who has been tinkering with this whisky for a decade, has married barley grown on the Glenmorangie land with a chocolate malt to create the mash. He has also blended some of the distillery's whiskies of various ages that have been aged in a variety of woods, presumably sherry casks, wine casks, and the like. Being part of LVMH gives Lumsden quite a selection of casks to choose from throughout the company's portfolio of wines and spirits. (The Paris-based luxury conglomerate's other wine and spirits holding include such brands as Dom Perignon, Hennessy, Chateau d'Yquem, and Chopin vodka.)

The taste: Deep in the background of Signet I detect the honey and vaguely mineral taste of Glenmorangie. But then you also get deeper flavors of leather and chocolate that are what sets it apart from the rest of the portfolio. As Lumsden is almost fanatical about creating complex tastes, it is no surprise that I also get a touch of the sherry, as well as a bit of apple and marmalade in my nose. There's even a wee bit of maple. And it makes me wonder if Lumsden tapped a magical mapley barrel I sampled in his storage barn—a 17-year-old that had been sitting in a sherry barrel for seven years.

While the taste is pleasing, there is, I admit, the absence of smoothness or a long finish that I associate with longer aging. The difference between a well-crafted and carefully barreled 15-year-old whisky and a 20-year-old is often the added smoothness. Without knowing all the ages of the whiskies Lumsden used in Signet, I'm guessing most of the whiskies were between six and 12 years old, with some younger and older ones blended as well.