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But when thou pours thy strong heart's blood
There thou shines chief
Scotch Drink
Robert Burns
The pot still is featured on the shield of Ballantine's coat of arms because of its immense influence on flavour and quality in the distillation process.
Scotch whisky is generally distilled twice, Irish whiskey three times. The Irish boast that theirs is the only true way. The Scots, who have heard it all before, smile patiently. Perhaps the Irish wouldn't need a third distillation if they got it right first time around, they say.
In truth, eminent Master Blenders like Robert Hicks believe that a third distillation adds nothing to the finished flavour. But while these good-natured arguments fly back and forth, the question of where the flavour of an exceptional whisky comes from remains unresolved.
Barley might have a bearing on it; the amount of peating certainly has an influence. Water, too, varying in quality and character from region to region and parish to parish, makes its presence felt. However, the factor that shapes good whisky - and the one on which everyone generally agrees - is the size and shape of hand-made burnished copper stills. Distillers traditionally regarded every dent and cobweb on them as sacred and avoided changing them in any way lest the delicate flavour of their malt was damaged.
There's a wealth of superstition surrounding pot stills and the wisdom, or otherwise, of disturbing them. Perhaps equally discussed is the mysterious effect on whisky of the atmosphere and geographical location of the distillery itself.
'Just before the turn of the century, one famous distillery near Rothes decided it was doing well enough to expand,' relates Bill Craig, retired General Manager of ADL's malt distilleries. 'They built another distillery across the road, using the same water and almost identical stills. There was even a pipe across the main street taking spirit from the new distillery to the old. Oddly enough, the malt produced in the new location tasted lighter and fruitier and was so unlike the original, it was given a different name.'
On occasions, when the gods smile down, a location change can be successful. Balblair distillery, in the wild beauty of Ross & Cromarty, was moved half a mile in 1872 to take advantage of a newly-built railway, a branch of the Highland Line, linking it to Glasgow and the south. Curiously, the risky manoeuvre was managed without the flavour of the whisky being affected in any way. The owners considered themselves extremely lucky, and never moved again.
'The whisky industry is very conservative,' Bill says. 'If a distillery makes good whisky, there's a reluctance to change anything in case it might be noticeable in the finished product. The general public might not be aware of the difference, but a Master Blender would certainly pick up on it.'
The old American adage: 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it', might almost be the distiller's motto.
Configuration Every variety of still is at work in the industry - tall, short, fat and narrow, with assorted lumps and bumps to encourage unwanted oils and other compounds to fall back into the pot. For centuries the argument has raged over long necks versus short necks and exactly which shape makes the best whisky.
There is an old yardstick that dictates, 'the longer the neck, the lighter the whisky'. The theory being that oils and other natural impurities carried in the alcoholic vapour rising up the still, fall back into the bowl before condensing, leaving a purer whisky. If this is so, how do distilleries with short squat pot stills, like Balblair for instance, produce exquisite malts? Balblair, which has not been bottled for some years but is produced almost solely for Ballantine's, is barely promoted or advertised. Yet, the distillery is immensely popular among titled and wealthy international house guests at neighbouring castles. They drop in to sample the legendary malt - ignoring a high-profile rival boasting the tallest stills in the Highlands, just minutes away.
Perhaps the answer lies in theory Number Two which decrees that the character of whisky is in fact determined not by the purity of the spirit manufactured, but by the natural impurities it contains.
'We have used the same water for 205 years and have never altered the shape of our stills,' says Balblair's manager Jim Yates. 'I can't think of one reason why we should change now.'
Pot stills lie at the very heart of the whisky-making process. The 'wash', a mild malt ale between five and ten per cent volume by alcohol, is pumped into the first still, known as the wash still. This is generally bigger than the spirit stills, central to the distilling process, because it has to take a large volume.
The wash still is heated up to just below the boiling point of water and the temperature held there until the foaming yeasty liquid begins to vaporise. Alcohol and the more volatile compounds evaporate first, rising over the top of the neck to condense in the worm - a coiled copper tube submerged in running water.
The high level of workmanship in building stills results in equipment which is in service for years. 'Miltonduff stills were installed in 1896 and we replaced them in 1950,' Bill Craig says. 'How often the shoulders and neck were repaired or replaced during that time, I have no idea. In the immediate post-war years copper was scarce, so we continued to patch and reinforce them. By the time we finally replaced them, the copper had worn so thin you could push it in and out with your thumb.
'Over the years I saw lots of changes and improvements in whisky-making,' says Bill. 'Greater mechanisation reduced the back-breaking drudgery that there used to be. But in the important things, it remains the same. As far as the basic art of distilling is concerned, it's still very much bound up with the know-how that comes with years of experience.'
Some aspects of life in Highland distilleries remained unchanged for many years. Bill can recall days at Miltonduff when whisky left the distillery by horse and cart and power was supplied by water from a dam.
'Sometimes in the middle of the night, my father would wake me up and say, "Son, the dam's full - away and open it up." I didn't mind at all. In fact I loved it.'
In his boyhood in the 1930s, Bill's father was manager at Miltonduff, while his Aunt Margaret ran the distillery at Glenburgie, reputedly the first female distillery manager in the Scotch whisky industry. On his way home from school he would often cycle between the two to visit them. At the age of 16, he followed his father's footsteps by becoming an apprentice at Miltonduff. Eventually, when his father retired, he succeeded him as manager.
'What makes whisky distilling so interesting,' Bill says, looking back, 'is that it's not an entirely predictable industrial process. You are dealing with living organisms and a lot depends on the eye of the stillman and the skill of his colleagues. There is always an element that can't be measured. In the final analysis, there's no logic to this distilling business. We're quite honest about the fact that we can't explain it. But then, the unexplainable is one of the reasons for the success of good quality Scotch whisky like Ballantine's.'
Balblair, one of the few distilleries to retain its wooden washbacks, has one of the oldest surviving stills of its type in the industry ready on standby in case of emergency.
'The copper is riveted and it dates from the turn of the century,' Jim Yates says proudly. 'It is quite unique and hasn't been used in the 18 years I've been here. But it could go tomorrow if need be.'
Scotland's coppersmiths are kept busy repairing pot stills. The metal is generally around three-quarters of an inch thick at the bottom and half an inch thick on the shoulders. The same goes for the 'ogee', where shoulders meet the neck and most of the wear takes place, tapering to a fine three-eighths of an inch as the neck ascends.
At one time they were constructed by beating sheets of copper by hand with hammers, a method which left indentations unique to each still. Today, stills are created by shaping the copper on rollers and mechanical hammers, giving a smoother appearance.
Wash and spirit stills were traditionally fired by coal or peat. This had disadvantages because precise control was difficult. If the fire was too hot, the wash could boil, tainting the flavour of the distilled alcohol. Scapa, in the Orkneys, one of the fingerprint malts of 17 Years Old, made history when it was built in 1885 as one of the first distilleries to fit steam jackets around its stills. They were heated by steam from a coal-fired boiler and caused quite a stir in the industry.
Whisky-making has always adhered to traditional methods and relied on natural ingredients, but the other side - the distillery as a 'factory' - has aroused Scottish talent for engineering, economy and invention.
'In the late 40s and early 50s, some distillers started burning oil beneath their stills as a substitute for coal,' Bill Craig recalls. 'It wasn't a success - the high sulphur content of the oil played havoc with the copper.'
Ballantine's, not easily swayed by fashion, held back, concerned that new methods might affect quality and the high production values of 17 Years Old. As Bill explained, even if the general public could not detect changes in flavour, the legendary nose of Master Blender Jack Goudy certainly would.
Instead, Ballantine's malt distilleries bided their time. Bill and his team began experimenting with the idea of a coiled heated tube inside the pot still.
'It worked rather like the element in an electric kettle, except that it was heated with steam,' he says. 'I was sent to Glenburgie Distillery as manager in 1958 and I didn't know too much about steam heating, but we played around with a small still and decided to give it a try. One advantage was that it was much more controllable than coal, but the great attraction was that it halved fuel costs without affecting quality or flavour.
'One of the disadvantages of coal-firing was that, if you were careless, you could burn out the bottom of a still. The only way to control the temperature when the wash came up to the boil, and the yeasts were frothing up, was to take a cold water hose and damp down the fire.
'In those days there was no sight glass to allow us to monitor what was happening inside. We had a hollow ball which banged against the head of the still when the liquid boiled up. You wasted quite a lot of coal lighting the fire up and damping it down again.'
The experiment was such a success that Pulteney and Glencadam distilleries followed in 1959, then Miltonduff, until all Ballantine's malt distilleries used internal steam heating. 'Other distillers began to copy the idea, many of them in great secrecy,' Bill recalls. 'We were delighted because we achieved a breakthrough without compromising our commitment to quality.'
Less direct heat on the still's copper surface also meant prolonged life - and a dedicated distillery manager will do anything to avoid replacing his stills and jeopardising the flavour of his whisky.
There was a time when distillery managers were even wary of disturbing cobwebs in their stillroom. 'It may sound amusing, but it's understandable,' says Balblair's Jim Yates. 'You tend to think: if these conditions have helped create good whisky for a hundred years or more, then there's no reason to change them. I suppose the philosophy is: "meddle at your peril".'
Distilling is the focal point of the whisky-making process, calling on all the stillman's skill and co-ordination of hand and eye.
Distillate collected from the wash still - the crude first stage of the process - is known as 'low wines'. They are held in a receiver (the 'low wines charger') until all the alcohol has evaporated from the wash still. They are then run off into a spirit still where distillation proceeds in a slower, more precise manner with the temperature carefully controlled.
Such was the exciseman's obsession about anyone unlawfully laying their hands on whisky at any stage of manufacture before tax had been paid that, in 1823, the spirit safe was invented. This eccentric device, resembling a goldfish tank secured by a large padlock, is still used, allowing the stillman to control and test the distillation without physically touching the spirit in any way.
When pot distillation proper gets under way, vapours from the heated low wines pass up the neck of the still to be cooled in the condenser. These condensed low wines, which cannot yet be called whisky, are passed through the clear glass of the spirit safe under the stillman's steady gaze.
The stream of young spirit is usually divided into three sections called 'cuts'. Foreshots, the first part of the flow, contain natural oils and impurities unsuitable for whisky.
Foreshots can run for up to 40 minutes. After that, the clear, colourless spirit passing through the safe acquires a bluish tinge, alerting the stillman that the stream is becoming purer. As a test, he can add distilled water to see if the foreshots have given way to pure spirit. Cloudy liquid tells him the foreshots are still running.
When the cloudiness clears, it indicates that the foreshots have passed. The purer spirit, or heart of the run, follows. This 'centre cut', the spirit of the barley, which is collected to make whisky, is about 60 per cent alcohol by volume, or around 110 proof.
Towards the end of the distillation, when the copper pot still is hot and most of the alcohol has vaporised, oily substances and other compounds begin to evaporate which would lend an unpleasant taste to the whisky. This final part of the run, which follows the 'centre cut', is known as the 'feints'. They are channelled away to join the unwanted foreshots back in the receiver, where they are mixed with the next quantity of low wines awaiting distillation.
The stillman controls the direction of the foreshots, centre cut and feints with a lever, discarding or keeping the distillate without touching it. The spirit safe also contains hydrometers to test the colourless running spirit, so the stillman will know when the low wines have finished evaporating and just distilled water is running through.
Capturing the heart of the run requires a high level of skill and experience. As Iain Henderson, manager of Laphroaig distillery puts it: 'If the stillman does not get things right here, however much care has been taken with the mashing and fermentation, however much time may be spent in maturing the spirit, it will not be of the highest quality.'
So, does the question of why one whisky turns out to be superior to another hang on method, or the way a pot's size and shape can influence flavour? We know for a fact that flavour is determined in several ways before distillation even takes place, so pot still shape and size is not an overriding factor, though everyone accepts that its importance can be crucial. Chemists and the Master Blender at Ballantine's take a controversial view of this vital aspect of distilling. They believe that the traditional idea should take second place to applying the utmost skill and precision to capturing the heart of the run.
'Some people say that you have to run the foreshots until the spirit is absolutely clear, which can mean up to 40 minutes,' says Robert Hicks. 'But in doing so, some schools of thought would say you may be losing some of the very flavours you require.
'I was brought up to believe that some of the flavours that come over before the spirit runs clear are precisely what we are looking for and should not be discarded. Because of this, our malt distilleries run the foreshots for between ten and 25 minutes before we cut from the heads onto the spirit.
'The times are based on visits I, or my assistant Sandy, make to our distilleries. Every two and a half minutes we take samples from the spirit safe and test for flavour. Some samples contain flavours you don't want, but you also discover others that you would like to keep - flavours you know will mature out and, in years to come, provide just what you are looking for. This is the philosophy all our distilling is based upon. As long as the stills at each distillery produce a consistent spirit, we are less worried about shape.
'When we closely examine the cuts we have taken, we decide what we want up to a specific point. This may be ten or 20 minutes earlier than tradition dictates. A short, fat still, for example, may come in with the right flavours after ten minutes. To get the same from a long thin one may take up to 20 minutes.
'We cut early and look at the spirit from the nose rather than the colour. The old-fashioned view is that you have to wait until the heart of the run is clear, which eliminates flavours you don't want. But we believe there are certain flavours in there that you do want. We cut early, but the whisky is still perfectly clear.
'I am a traditionalist, but I have a great curiosity about anything new. It's an approach that started back in the Hiram Walker days at the birth of 17 Years Old and we discovered it worked. It provided the style we wanted, not only for 17 Years Old, but the whole Ballantine's family.'
After the alchemy of barley, water and stills, whisky is left to mature - the long years when the interaction of whisky and oak casks leaves its mark.