Edinburgh whisky distillery tour: the three, compared

Edinburgh was once a serious whisky town. Leith in particular was where Scotch was blended, bonded and shipped — the port handled an enormous share of the trade, and the warehouses ran for streets.

What it lost, over the first half of the twentieth century, was production. Distilleries closed, blending consolidated elsewhere, and the trade moved out of the port. By the time anybody thought to count, the city that had explained Scotch to the world for a century did not make any.

That is why the current situation is genuinely interesting rather than merely convenient. Holyrood opening in 2019 and Port of Leith in 2023 is not a tourism gimmick; it is the first time in living memory that spirit has run in the city. Both are small, both are young, and both are honest about it.

Malting and milling. Barley is steeped, germinated and dried, then ground into grist. Most distilleries buy malt in now rather than doing it on site, and the honest ones say so. At Glenkinchie the old malting floors were turned into a museum in 1969, which is a better exhibit than most working ones.

Mashing. Hot water through the grist in a mash tun to extract sugars. This is where the smell of the building changes completely, and it is the moment most visitors remember.

Fermentation. Yeast into the washbacks, and forty-eight to seventy-two hours later you have something around eight per cent alcohol that tastes like sour beer. Longer fermentations produce fruitier spirit, which is a genuine point of difference between distilleries.

Distillation. Twice through copper, usually. The wash still first, then the spirit still, with the stillman cutting the middle section — the heart — away from the first and last runnings. The shape of the still changes the spirit, which is why no two are the same and why nobody ever replaces one with a different design.

Maturation. At least three years in oak casks of no more than seven hundred litres, and bottled at no less than forty per cent. That is the law, not a tradition — the Scotch Whisky Regulations 2009 — and it is why a new distillery has to wait.

Under the Scotch Whisky Regulations 2009 nothing may be called Scotch until it has spent at least three years in oak. That single rule explains almost everything about the two new distilleries in this city.

It means a distillery that opens in 2019 cannot sell its own Scotch until 2022 at the earliest, and cannot sell anything with real age on it for a decade or more. Meanwhile it has to pay for the building, the copper, the casks, the warehouse and the staff.

There are two normal answers. The first is gin, which needs no ageing and can be sold the week it is made — which is why almost every new Scottish distillery makes it, Holyrood included. The second is buying in mature stock from elsewhere and bottling it under your own label while your own spirit sleeps.

Both are entirely legitimate and the good distilleries are open about which is which. It is worth asking on any tour of a young distillery: is this one yours? The answer tells you a great deal about the people running it.