Girvan Patent Still 25 Year Old 70cl / 42% Single Grain Scotch Whisky In 2013, Grant's took the decision to introduce a range of Single Grain whiskies from their Girvan distillery in Ayrshire. The The first release is this 25 year old grain whisky Nose: Rich and luxurious on the nose with layers of oaky vanilla, creamy toffee and a cinnamon. With a little water there are subtle citrus, marmalade notes Taste: Velvety smooth with an incredibly sweet flavor. Crème Brule, toffee apple, nutmeg and an intriguing citrus note. With time the flavour evolves into deeper, richer notes including chocolate orange and baked apple pie Finish: Lingering sweetnessGirvanA tribute to devil-may-care and technique By J. Nedergaard It is now fifty years since the very first freshly distilled drops from Girvan distillery were put into casks. The casks, no. 1, 2 and 3 from 1964, are actually still there - on a shelf in a so-called "racked warehouse" - a warehouse with a dirt floor where the casks are stored on metal shelves. Not many people have visited this place, let alone heard of it, despite it being perhaps the ugliest distillery in Scotland. But never judge a book by its cover, or a distillery by its appearance, because Girvan, despite its anonymity in the public eye, is recognized in the whisky industry as a must-have whisky for a proper blended whisky - because Girvan is not a malt whisky distillery. Girvan is a grain whisky distillery - a distillery that stands as a monument to a Scottish family's struggle against the big boys.
Christmas Day 1963 Turn back the clock to Christmas Day 1963. The first drops are flowing from the new boiler. Actually, it was before it was planned, but Glenfiddich, owned by the same family, had also distilled for the first time on Christmas Day 76 years earlier in 1887. And at Girvan everything was ready by mid-December 1963, except for the cooperage, which meant that the Christmas distillation couldn't be bottled until the new year - 1964. But the story begins even further back. 26-year-old director William Grant Gordon, grandson of Glenfiddich founder William Grant, had two sons. First Charles in 1927, and four years later Alexander. At the age of 6, Charles told his beloved father that he too wanted to be a whisky distiller, just like his father. The plan was for both Charles and Alexander to work alongside their father until he retired. But William Grant Gordon died at the age of 53 in 1953, and two weeks later, the 26-year-old Charles had become CEO of a family business consisting of two whisky distilleries and Grant's whisky. Supporting him was his 22-year-old brother.
Innovative They had both worked at Glenfiddich as part of their father's plan to "find out what the hell is going on". Charles had even worked at Linkwood and North British distilleries and a modern malthouse, but they were not at all prepared to take over a business at their young age. Over the next few years, they learned the business and relaunched Grant's in a new and different bottle. It was triangular - something that had never been seen in the industry before. The newly designed bottle gave Alexander and Charles a new lease of life. So much so that they decided Grant's should be on TV. Again, quite innovative. However, the young men unwittingly broke a "Gentleman's Agreement", an unwritten agreement between distillers in Scotland not to go on TV.
I'll build my own damn thing The Distillers Company Limited (DCL) brought this to the brothers' attention. DCL was the biggest whisky maker of the 1960s, with brands such as Johnnie Walker and Black & White, now called Diageo, by far the world's biggest spirits maker. DCL was the supplier of grain whisky for the Grant family's blended whisky. A blended whisky requires both grain whisky, grain whisky made from wheat or corn, and malt whisky made in copper kettles from malted barley. Charles Grant Gordon resisted and talked to his brother about how he didn't think DCL should interfere with the family's business. When DCL started jacking up the price of grain whisky supplies and then threatened not to renew the supply contract, it was too much for Charles. He dug in his heels and said "I'll build my own".
But a grain distillery is not easy to build. It's much more complicated than malt distilleries, and normally it might take 18-24 months to build. With Charles as whip, it was done in just 8 months. From TNT to whisky He found a place in the south of Scotland where there was plenty of water, easy access to grain supplies and good labor. He bought the site where Girvan stands today and incorporated some of the existing buildings, while removing remnants of previous production on the site. TNT. Explosives and ammunition had previously been manufactured there.
Charles lived in a caravan on the site during construction, cycling back and forth every day, whipping up enthusiasm and recklessness - and when that didn't work, he brought a bottle of whiskey. It is said that 1500 bottles of whiskey were used to build Girvan. The bike? The contractors had a love-hate relationship with Charles, so the bike was kidnapped and welded to the top of a fermentation vat. But the loyalty to the contractors and their temporary workers on the project continued, so when it came time to hire production staff, the most natural thing for Charles to do was to offer to hire the people who had helped build the distillery - "they knew how it worked". He founded the malt whisky era Today, the relationship with DCL's successor, Diageo, has normalized and they sell or swap casks with each other, but back in the thirties, building the Girvan distillery wasn't enough for Charles. During his many trips abroad, he had noticed that there might be an opportunity to export malt whisky. Malt whisky was the powerful whisky drunk in the towns around the distilleries and used to make blended whisky, but Charles believed, while others laughed at him, that malt whisky would be the future. In 1962, Glenfiddich was released in the green triangular bottle for the first time (so you could tell it was related to Grant's), and the following year they began exporting to both the UK and the US, and the rest is pretty much history for the world's largest malt whisky - still owned by the same family. Today, Grant's is the world's third largest blended whisky after Johnnie Walker and Ballantine's. Grain whisky - the new black? Charles died in December 2013 and he was active to the end. He would be proud that the Grant family, now the 5th generation, is once again leading the way and launching Girvan as a single grain whisky. Grain whisky has so far only been used as a component of blended whisky or as rare niche bottlings, but the Grant family believes there is potential. And it looks like they are right. Shortly after the first bottles hit the UK market, Diageo announced the launch of Haig Club - a cool single grain whisky for young people. And how do you signal that? You hire David Beckham, former footballer and style icon married to Victoria (another style icon) of course - and you also sign Simon Fuller, known as the Spice Girls backer and founder/judge of the Pop Idol competitions that dominate the media landscape around the world.Girvan and the Grant family have far from the same budget. It must be the taste that will do the talking when the two different variants are launched during the summer. Elegance, taste and technique One is 25 years old and has the full name The Girvan Patent Still 25 Years Old Single Grain Whisky, distilled in the original patent column still, which has been given its own "romantic" nickname "No. 1 Apps", meaning "appliance number 1". Appliance? Yes, because this is not a kettle in the traditional
