Cooperages - Post by Whisky Magazine

Since both grain and malt whisky must be aged in oak casks for a minimum of three years before it can even be called whisky, the supply of casks is vital to the entire industry. Around 5% of the casks used are sherry casks, while the rest are predominantly American oak.

Speyside Cooperage is the largest independent cooperage in the UK. It was owned by the Taylor family until 2008 when it was bought by the French cooperage group Tonnellerie Francois Group. The cooperage has a visitor center and is a really exciting place to visit if you happen to drop by Craigellachie.

In the past, all bourbon barrels in the US were broken down into staves and assembled on pallets to be transported over to Scotland, where coopers then assembled the staves into a new barrel size, 250 liter hogsheads. Today, many American casks come to distilleries in Scotland directly from the bourbon industry and are filled without having passed through a cooper in Scotland. At the same time, many casks are being sourced overseas, mainly from Spanish producers, and as a result, there is less employment for cooperages in Scotland. This can easily be seen in the figures for employment in the cooperage industry, which has gone from around 1,000 trained coopers in the whisky industry in the early 1980s, to only 220 people employed as coopers today (in 2014). Many of these are employed directly by distillers, who to some extent handle the casks themselves. Of the 220 people employed, 140 are employed by the distillers, while only 80 are employed by private cooperages, of which there are of course not many left anymore. Existing private cooperages include Camlachie Cooperage in Glasgow, Carsebridge Cooperage in Alloa and of course the best known of them all, Speyside Cooperage in Craigellachie.