New Vibrations
Scotch Whisky
FOUNDERS & LEGACIES
The Scotch whisky industry was revolutionised in the 1850s with the advent of the first blenders. These Glasgow and Edinburgh grocers founded some of the most recognisable blend brands, a few of which still dominate the market today: Johnnie Walker, Chivas, and many more besides. In honour of these pioneers, this chapter opens with Compass Box, which has been reinventing the art of blending since 2000 under the stewardship of John Glaser.
Although blenders arguably fashioned the whisky market, it would be markedly different without the independent bottlers whose work helped build the reputation of single malt. The first few pages of this chapter are dedicated to them, starting with the Artist #13 range – a collaboration between La Maison du Whisky and Independent bottler Hua Yang. A major player in the Taiwanese market, Hua Yang boasts a truly impressive collection of casks, including whiskies from legendary distillery Karuizawa.
This chapter also gives pride of place to some of the most venerable bottling houses: Berry Bros. & Rudd and Gordon & MacPhail (founded respectively in 1698 and 1895) stand here alongside Douglas Laing (1948) Silver Seal (1979) and Signatory Vintage (1988). These historic
players made it possible for numerous distilleries, such as Caol Ila, Glen Grant, Ardbeg, Bunna- habhain, and Mortlach to make a name for themselves beyond the borders of Scotland.
Following in the footsteps of these pioneers, a new generation of Independent bottlers now takes pride in its careful selection of exclusive single malts, often spotlighting cask strength versions. Notable examples include Fox Fitzgerald, Whisky Sponge, Hidden Spirits, and Elixir Distillers, all of which were founded in this century. The section dedicated to Independent bottlers is rounded out with the second Artist#13 collection, created in collaboration with world-famous bottler Scotch Malt Whisky Society – which celebrates its fortieth anniversary in 2023.
In the second half of this Scotland-focused chapter, the selection weaves backward through time. The youngest distilleries are highlighted first: Isle of Harris (founded 2015, and launching its very first whisky: The Hearach), farm distillery Kilchoman (2005), Lochranza (1995) and Lagg (2019), the latters having enthusiastically played host to the New Vibrations project. The catalogue then leaps all the way into the previous century, with a selection of whiskies from distilleries that forged the very identity of Scotch whisky in the early 1800s.
1+1=3
Since its founding in 2000, Compass Box has been working hard to restore the slightly tarnished image of blended whisky, with the category clearly overshadowed by single malt since the 1980s. With its inspiringly-named releases and finely-calibrated blends of Scotch malt and grain whiskies, the company’s vision of the art of blending is both original and fiercely artisanal, a far cry from pervasive industrial cliches.
For La Maison du Whisky’s Creations catalogue, John Glaser took up the New Vibrations theme – creating not one, but two limited editions: New ‘A-Side’, a suave, tangy, and balanced blended grain whisky, and ‘B-Side’, a lively blended malt with smoky and herbaceous accents.
These releases, with their obvious references to vinyl records, were designed to be enjoyed as-is, but also to be mixed according to three different recipes with astonishingly varied flavour profiles, created by Compass Box whisky maker James Saxon. This creative experience takes the form of a boxed set designed by La Maison du Whisky and Compass Box: The New Vibrations Blending Experience (see Boxed Set chapter).
"Blending is a source of creativity, where it’s possible to imagine something more complex than the sum of its parts." - John Glaser, founder of Compass Box and whisky maker.
ARTIST #13 OVER 30
Ever since its first release in 2011, La Maison du Whisky’s Artist series has featured exceptional whiskies bottled at cask strength, the vast majority of them being Scotch single casks. Each year, sculptors, painters, illustrators, and photographers are invited to create the series’ new labels.
This latest edition is a collaboration with Hua Yang, an independent bottler founded in 2008 by Taiwanese whisky luminary Eric Huang. Since 2013, Hua Yang has held the largest share of mythical Japanese distillery Karuizawa’s remaining casks (the distillery having closed its doors in 2011), and is today the distillery’s only distributor in Asia. In addition, it has assembled an impressive collection of casks from some of Scotland’s greatest distilleries.
A remarkable portfolio, to which Artist #13 Over 30, a series dedicated to very old whiskies, owes its unique character. This thirteenth series is distinct from the range’s usual lineup of 10-, 15-, 20-, 25-, 30-year-olds, and so forth: it is a collection of five pre-1992 vintages, distilled by some of the malt elder: Littlemill, the country’s oldest licenced distillery (1772), Islay staple Ardbeg (1815), Highlander Glen Garioch (1797), and two Speyside distilleries, Benriach (1898) and Glen Keith (1957). This remarkable quintet is joined by a 1999 Karuizawa single cask.
Credits
Geometry of Music - Wang Yung Chiu
Displaced Facade Aureolin - Wang Yung Chiu
INTERVIEW WITH WANG YUNG CHIU
To create the labels for this edition, La Maison du Whisky has called upon Taiwanese painter Wang Yung Chiu. An interview with the artist, a whisky enthusiast himself, follows.
What is your background as an artist?
I was lucky enough to realize very early on that I wanted to make art my career. My parents didn’t raise us in this world, but I probably had more time than they did, in my life, to explore this path. I discovered art in elementary school. My head teacher saw how sensitive to art and how interested in it I was, and arranged for me to attend visual arts classes instead of sports. I naturally ended up following an arts curriculum at Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle.
Could you describe your creative process and technique for creating the labels for the Artist range?
I prepare my canvas with a latex base, a material which cracks as it dries, creating fissures. The size of these crevices varies depending on ambient humidity and drying time, which can go from 3 days to 2 weeks. Then, for the colour versions,
I apply watercolour to the base, which is full of cracks that trap the colour. I clean off the paint, then cover the surface again, wipe it off once more, and so on. The canvas thus becomes matte and without lustre, without varnish. The surface only retains traces, stains of this paint that I rubbed in and wiped off many times. My work is defined by this very repetitive gesture.
So you work on imprints, rather than searching for pure colour?
My canvases remain very colourful after I’ve applied and washed off multiple coats of paint. This process, for me, symbolises the effect of time on all things. There only remains a tenuous, matte trace of the once very saturated, pigment-rich colour. My paintings have something in common with the fragile-coloured vestiges that archaeologists exhume from their digs.
Cracks seem like they are a leitmotiv in your work. What do they symbolise?
In all my work, I experiment with this crack motif created by the drying latex base. Like the traces of paint, for me they are a metaphor for exis- tence. We all have the innate feeling that we will
one day disappear, that it is useless to fight against time. These cracks are a metaphor for what remains, for what survives of us.
What is your perception of the whisky world?
Behind every bottle, I can also see the know-how that is involved in transforming and sublimating the raw materials. It’s like art, in that way. And also for how it conveys memory and history. At a tasting event in Taipei, I was lucky enough to sample a Port Ellen, the mythical distillery that was shuttered in the last century*, and I found it fascinating to think that I held in my glass a record of the past.
*Founded on Islay in 1820, the Port Ellen distillery ceased its whisky production in 1984, but its malt house remained in operation. The distillery, now owned by Diageo, announced a restoration project in 2017, and aims to reopen soon.
Credits (from top to bottom) :
Singed Sierra,
Moira Obscura,
Arboreal Swamp I,
Moon Jar Serenade IV,
Wang Yung Chiu.
THE SCOTCH MALT WHISKY SOCIETY, FOR THE ARTIST #13 RANGE
Founded in 1983 by a group of friends under the leadership of Scotsman Philip “Pip” Hills, the Scotch Malt Whisky Society (SMWS) celebrates its fortieth anniversary in 2023 – a milestone La Maison du Whisky has elected to honour by granting SMWS pride of place within this catalogue, as a guest bottler in the Artist #13 series.
A private club for in-the-know enthusiasts, dedicated to the culture and tasting of fine spirits, SMWS has over the years accrued over 25,000 members worldwide. The Vaults, its historic head- quarters in Edinburgh’s port district of Leith, is housed within a 12th Century building where its members still gather today: it attracts numerous enthusiasts, who seek to discover a whisky bar with an unparalleled selection and an inimitable, convivial atmosphere.
A bottler as respected as it is unconventional, SMWS collects whiskies from around the world – but also rums, cognacs, and more – which it offers its members in the form of single-casks, bottled at cask strength. Its releases all bear a codename, made up of the distillery’s identification number followed by the cask number, and lastly a name chosen by the committee after a blind taste test. The resulting titles
are often rather playful, as evidenced by the five bottles in the SMWS Artist #13 collection.
Sometimes laden with clues and symbols, the names SMWS gives its bottlings can also point quite directly to a specific distillery, as is the case with Stag Wine, which undeniably evokes one of the Highlands’ most famous single malts. Other titles can borrow from different worlds entirely, such as Sweet Smoky Dreams Are Made Of This. A happy coincidence, as the song referenced here – written and performed by UK duet Eurythmics – was positively inescapable in 1983... which just so happens to be the year of SMWS’ founding.
Other names are harder to decipher, leaving it up to tasters to find the keys to interpret these delightful titles with the help of the quirky back-label text, or to lose themselves in speculation while gazing at the series’ minimalist and abstract illustrations: Scottish artist Claire Barclay’s works lend themselves wonderfully to meditative contemplation.
Crédits
New View1 - ClaireBarclay
New View 2 - Claire Barclay
Unearthing 1 - Claire Barclay
New View 3 - Claire Barclay
Untitled - Claire Barclay
LAGG
On March 19, 2019, the first drops of a future whisky flow from the Forsyth’s stills of the Lagg distillery, which opened in the south of the Isle of Arran after two years of construction. Dedicated to the production of peated single malts, Lagg is the island’s second distillery after the one founded in 1995 at Lochranza, north of Arran. The first three small batches were unveiled in August 2022, followed by the first expressions of the perma- nent range.
Under its green roof, the site houses a vast space where all stages of production are brought together: milling, brewing, fermentation and distillation. Huge glass roofs offer breathtaking views of the sea and surrounding countryside. As for the four warehouses, they are located just a few metres from the distillery, with the only neighbors being the fields where sheep graze.
In June 2023, La Maison du Whisky invited elec- tronic music composer Saycet to this young distillery with its resolutely modern architecture. “I listened to Saycet’s albums before his visit and became a big fan, explains Graham Omand, distillery manager. I was very enthusiastic about the project of creating music from recordings made in our distillery. Because all the different stages of production take place in the
same room, Lagg made it possible to record a soundscape generated simultaneously by all stages of the process, very distinct from the silent atmosphere of the cellars.”
Inspired by this trip to the Isle of Arran, Saycet’s piece Vibrations offers a unique experience at the heart of the spirits universe.
ISLE OF HARRIS
Built on the shores of East Loch Tarbert, on the Isle of Lewis and Harris, the Isle of Harris distillery opened its doors on September 25, 2015. Its genesis is closely linked to its founder’s desire, Anderson Bakewell, to halt the demographic decline of this Hebrides island, whose population - 2,000 - had been halved in 50 years. Simon Erlanger, the company’s managing director, recalls the beginnings of this Social Distillery, created by and for the people of Harris: “Regarding production we recruited and trained a local team to be the first
distillers from Harris. For the past eight years, we did lean on the expertise of highly experienced advisors, from Charlie Maclean to the late Dr. Jim Swan, along with Dr. Gordon Steele and Kenny Gray. These ‘wise men’ have supported our team and passed on their knowledge, always on hand to advise.”
Renowned for its gin made from sugar kelp, a seaweed collected by a local fisherman, this year the distillery unveils its first single malt: The Hearach, named after the island’s inhabitants. To start whisky production, the distillery acquired eight Oregon pine washbacks, a stainless steel mashtun and stills made by Frilli, an Italian boilermaker’s workshop based in Siena for over a century. A new team, local of course, has been trained in blending techniques to create The Hearach. “As well as being part of the new wave of
Scottish producers, we’re also at the forefront of whisky production in the Outer Hebrides, explains master blender Shona Macleod. We’re helping to give our small region its place on the world map of single malts.”
