The Magic Ring of Brodgar - стр. 16
Gregor, who had come with them but had remained silent the whole way, swung the door open, gesturing for them to enter. The girl immediately noticed a distinctive smell – malt, as it seemed to her.
Megan didn't consider herself an expert in this field. She had never been fond of strong alcoholic beverages, preferring ale or cider instead. She had only drunk whisky once in her life, a few years back, and now barely remembered how it smelled. Inside, there was a reception desk and a small sofa. A pleasant-looking blonde woman – around fifty, dressed in a smart business suit, immediately approached the visitors.
“Good afternoon, Miss McKenzie. My name is Kirsty, I’m the head technologist at the distillery. Warren, Gregor, it’s good to see you. If you’re ready, we can proceed further. I will take you to the production technology and show you the distillery.”
“Thank you, Kirsty; lead the way,” Megan said.
In the room where the first stage of production took place, there was a huge vessel.
“This is the mash tun, where barley is added. Then, water is poured into it and left for 4–5 days. This is called the malting stage. During this time, the starch turns into sugar. The barley grains, after this process, need to be thoroughly dried with hot smoke from peat. We do that here,” the woman pointed towards an open door to another large room. “The peat subsequently gives the barley a unique aroma, which becomes an integral part of the future whisky.”
Moving ahead into the next room, Kirsty showed a massive purpose-built machine designed to grind malt into flour. Next to it was another huge mash vat.
“In this vat,” she continued, “we mix the grain with hot water, and keep it for about twelve hours. Then, in the cooled wort, we add yeast for the fermentation process to occur. After that, the contents of the vat are transferred into these copper stills. In there, the heat increases to 86 degrees Celsius. The alcohol rises up through the tubes then cools back down into a liquid state. This process is called distillation. It usually happens twice so that the content reaches 70 degrees. Then, we pour the obtained liquid into oak barrels and send them to the warehouse. The minimum period the liquid must age to be called whisky is three years. During this time, the spirit evaporates from sixty to forty degrees. The longer the whisky stays in the barrel, the richer its color and taste become. Whisky is the water of life, as they say in the north of Scotland.”
The small procession moved on, listening to Kirsty.
“And in this room, we proceed to bottling and packaging. As you can see, there is nothing complicated; just barley, water, yeast, and time.”
“Are the grain and barrels local?” Megan inquired.
Warren took the liberty in answering this question.
“The best Scottish grain grows here in the north. We have peaty heather fields which are unique to us, giving barley a special flavor. And we order oak barrels from Andalusia, Spain that come with sherry. The best barrels for whisky are those from sherry.”
“Thank you! You explained everything in great detail.”
They also visited the warehouses where barrels filled with whisky are stored. Megan tasted one of the aged single malt varieties, twenty years in maturation, noting that the flavor was very rich and the alcohol was barely noticeable. “Now I understand what good Scottish whisky means!” she said with a smile.