Interviewer:
For many, the process of creating an outstanding whisky is akin to a religious experience. And that could easily be the analogy you might use when describing the processes put in place by Waterford distillery in Ireland.
Although single malts are best known from the Scottish side of the industry, Ireland has been producing outstanding examples for centuries.
Laying down their first liquid in 2015, Waterford may be a newcomer to the field, but they believe the unwavering level of craftsmanship they bring to the whisky will speak for itself.
To find out more, we talked to Head Distiller, Ned Gahan, about the nuances of terroir, traceability, and transparency.
Thanks for joining us, Ned.

Ned Gahan:
Delighted to be talking with you, Tiff.

Interviewer:
Now, I suppose we should start off by saying that you don't make crystal, as the name might suggest.

Ned Gahan:
Yeah. No, that's true. We're not the crystal, we’re making the whisky. They're only a little bit down the road from us, but we're in the same city in the Southeast of Ireland, and like the Waterford crystal, we aim to make the finest whisky in the world.

Interviewer:
Now, you guys talk about bringing a winemaker's methodology and rigour to the barley that you use. What exactly does that mean?

Ned Gahan:
Yeah. So when we are looking at barley, we are sourcing only barley that's from Ireland, and we're looking at the terroir concept. And so, that basically is where the Barley is grown, the plant is grown, the grape is grown, is affected by the area that it's grown in; weather; it’s affected by topography; so everything that can affect where the plant is grown and how it's grown.
So for us, we're taking the wine concept; Mark worked in wine for 20 years, and saw the terroir concept. So what we are doing is we're keeping single farms separate. So to date, we've used nearly a hundred farms. We would use annually around 38, maybe 40 different farmers. And of that, we have organic, conventional, biodynamic, and heritage grains. And what we do is we keep every farm separate. So we built a facility called a Cathedral, to keep the grain separate; and we keep it separate throughout the whole process. And at the end then, we look at single farm releases and also Cuvées. So I suppose we're following the same principles that wine follows. And we're looking at the flavour is the barely, as with the wine, the flavour is the grape.

Interviewer:
Now, while you might be quite correct in saying that the grain has a terroir. A lot of people would argue that it's actually the barrel, rather than the grain, that gives whiskey its flavour. So how does that work in with what you guys are saying?

Ned Gahan:
Yeah. They can argue it if they want. One of the things that Mark knew would happen, would that people would try and knock the whole terroir concept and barley, and you will have the people who would say that the distillation process destroys flavours. And I would hate to think if I was distilling something, I was destroying anything.
And the way I look at it, actually, is like a chef making a sauce, when you are distilling, or when you're making a sauce, you're refining the flavours. When Mark was looking at this, then he decided that we would do what we called the Terroir Project. And, Tiff, that was basically a three-years study, which was to be peer reviewed, and was conducted by gentleman called Dr. Dustin Herb, in Oregon State University. And in conjunction with Teagasc, which was part of the Department Agriculture in Ireland, and Tatlock & Thomson, which are independent specialists in analysis of spirit in Scotland.
And we paid for it, but we didn't have any part in it as such. And what it came down to, is that it was accepted by Dustin's peers that terroir exists in Irish malted barley. So basically, that was saying that there was substantial differences in flavours from different plots in different terroirs; so the soil and the environment where it was grown give substantially different flavours to the spirit.
ISo if you take that premise that each farm is a different starting point. Okay? Then we do a lot of work on our casks. And then the other nugget, I suppose, is the 80/20 or 70/30 or 60/40. So I suppose there's not even really a percentage that everyone agrees on, on cask and barely, or cask and spirit. But what I would say is that a cask has 100% influence on its spirit.
That's a bit of a strange one; but what I would say.is that not all casks are equal. We have a very good wood program here. We spend over 30% of our overall budget on wood. So if the distillery wants to make savings, they will make it in wood. In the Irish Technical File, it says, you have to use wood such as oak. In Scotland, it says you have to use oak. But primarily, oak is used in Ireland. But what we do is we fill each farm roughly with the same percentage of wood; so each farm would get 50% American first-filled casks., 20% American virgin casks., 15% French wine casks, and 15% VDN, or vin doux naturel casks. And that for us, is what we would term sweet fortified wine: sherry, port, Madeira, Masala, even rum casks.
And the reason we're doing that is we're looking at what does the cask actually do? It helps mature, but you're also looking from the alcohol to extract the compounds of the wood. So European Oak and American Oak, or Quercus alba and Quercus robur have different compounds. And from, would say the European Oak, or primarily the French Oak that we use, we're looking for those lignans and tannins. In the American Oak, we're looking at those vanilla flavors that come out.
And the other thing is, American Oak matures probably in about 80 years, has a lot wider grain than European Oak.
European Oak would take maybe up to 200 years to mature, and has a lot finer grains. So the maturation process is going to be slightly different in those different casks as well. So when we're looking at a cask, we're looking to put different spirits from different farms into the best wood possible.
So our cast program is, we'll use a cask three times. So if a cask comes into us as an American first-filled, we'll fill it twice more and move it on. And if we feel twice is enough to fill it, we'll move it on. Some distilleries will use casks that are third, fourth, fifth filled casks, or Recharred casks. So not all casks are the same.
So if someone says to me, "80% of a flavour is coming from a cask." And the cask is being filled for the fifth or sixth time, or the second time after being recharring, what's the cast giving it?
Nothing, really. And the other thing is, the old Chestnut that I kind of dislike; and I can only speak from my point of view, is when you see someone says, "This is the colour of the whisky after one year, five years, 10 years, and 20 years." And you see it getting progressively darker. And from my experience, the cask will give the colour within the first 12 months, and that's it.
And an American first-filled cask will not give you that ruby red whisky that you're looking for. Where that tends to come from is your caramel, or your E150A. So we don't use any of that. So we have different casks to give us colour. So our American virgin casks will give us a bit of that red colour that you associate with whisky. An American first-filled cask will have a really light colour. Some of our VDN casks won't give us any colour, but what we're looking from that is our sweetness.
And our French casks can give us anywhere from a rose colour to a deep red colour, to a light colour. It's all natural colours, because of the wood. And I suppose that's one of the reasons our bottle is blue, because you shouldn't really look at a bottle of whiskey and say, "Oh, that's a dark colour, so that must be old and good."

Interviewer:
No. Fair enough point. Although, if you're using such good quality casks, won't they overwhelm any terroir that was in the grain anyway?

Ned Gahan:
Not necessarily, but what we're doing is we're looking at this as the next step of our project. We're looking at the terroir that goes into the cask, and then we're looking at the influence of the cask over time. So we're looking at that as we go along, because we laid down our first whisky, I think, in January, 2016; so it's relatively young. And so we're seeing it every day.
But what I can tell you from my own point of view is, all you can taste, the influence, the terroir from the spirit, that's still in the whiskey, in the cask.
So it's still there. But we're doing a project again, we're extending this Terroir Project because people have talked about wood, and we want to have a look as well. And we want to say, "Yep. This does happen. This doesn't happen." But from my point of view, when I'm tasting it, if I taste some of the spirit that I've put into a cask, I can taste that line or that lineage into the whisky. And then obviously, that is still there, but then the maturation process comes into play as well. So your starting point is a really good spirit; that's different in each farm. That's showing up for me in the whisky, plus the maturation on top of it.

Interviewer:
Right. Now, if you are keeping the grains separated, would most people be able to taste the different terroir from each of these farms, in different expressions that you produce, do you think?

Ned Gahan:
Some people may and some people won't. I suppose what we're looking to do is showcase each farm in the single farm origin; so we're looking to showcase the best of that spirit and that whisky. Some farms are actually really, really close to each other, and are very similar.
It's a very similar climate, would have the same barley variety; and actually, barley variety has a lot less to do with it than you would think. Would have been sown roughly around the same day, harvested around the same time, because we have all that information as well. And then there is differences; some may be subtle and some are very different, depending on say, topography. So some fields in Ireland are... They're not always flat. You'll have a field that's undulating, and will have a base at one point, and the water will lodge there or sit there; so that soil is going to be heavier. And that's actually reflected in the spirit.
So even though you'll have farms that are very close to each other, some will have subtle differences, and some will have dramatic differences. So you can taste them best in the new make. And unfortunately, people won't get to taste that. But for me, they do come true in the whiskey. And when we've done single farms before, when we try and keep them similar, when I'm putting the bottling together, I'm trying to be respectful to each farm, and give it the best balance of the casks as well. So I rarely would do the exact same cask breakdown, because that's not the way the farm is telling me to do it, if that makes sense.

Interviewer:
Yeah. No, it does. Now, you've certainly gone against the grain, to excuse the pun, and invested a lot in barley. Do you think that the way that you are approaching, and the respect you have for the barley will change the attitudes in the industry to the concepts of terroir?

Ned Gahan:
I think we have definitely started a conversation. Whether we changed attitudes is probably a little bit down to the consumer, and a little bit down to what people are interested in. So for us, we can only talk about what we do. What other distilleries do is totally down to themselves. And everyone has their own way of distilling and getting grain and everything. But what we are passionate about is where the barley comes from; it's only Irish barley. We're passionate about the casks and how we distill. And we've been very vocal, I suppose. Some people have maybe said, we're a little bit ballachy about it, but I don't think so. I think we're happy to talk to people, people like yourselves, and other people who are not necessarily totally whisky driven are interested in the concept as well.
We are looking at a lot of people who are coming onto our website, and you can see you ages and everything. And now, with all this modern technology, it gives you a breakdown of who's visiting your site.
And we're seeing a lot of young people, a lot of women visiting the site as well and looking at things. So I think people are curious as to what we're talking about. People are curious as to where their food is coming from, so it would stand a reason that they'd be curious as to where the whisky is coming from.
So, I think we've started a conversation; whether other people want to be involved in the conversation is up to them. And I think it's probably at the very start of this process. I think probably in a few years time, you'll see a lot more distilleries maybe concentrating on elements of it. Maybe not doing the whole lot, because it's a very costly way of doing it. It's not an efficient way of running a distillery. But I think you'll have people who are looking at aspects of terroir, or aspects of what we might be doing.

Interviewer:
Right. Now, of course, once you have the grain, you are putting it into your grain Cathedral, as you mentioned earlier. Do you want to tell us a little bit more about that?

Ned Gahan:
Yeah. So the project actually in Waterford, the whole concept doesn't work without the Cathedral. And so, in 2015, we were due to have our first harvest. And Mark went up to the Dalton brothers in Kilkenny, and spoke to the guys and told him his vision. And his vision was to have individual bays for the barley that was coming in, and also spoke to them about collecting the barley.
So usually what happens at harvest time, is the farmer will bring in his grain or will get someone to bring the grain into the maltster and is dumped there. But to ensure the traceability and transparency, we actually ask Mitch and Daltons, would they go out and collect the grain? So what happens then is each farmer who we would have in a particular year, we would collect maybe about 120 tons off them, in around that, green barley.
So, Daltons go out in three or four areas, and they bring it in, and it's dried in individual batches in a small dryer that's only for us. And then Daltons had about two months to build the Cathedral. So it's individual bays, concrete bays, where the dried barely of about 90 tons is stored separately. So it's dried to about 14% moisture; and the barely can be kept probably for about 18 months there in good conditions.
And when that's ready to be transported, then it's collected from that particular bay, and brought to a site to be malted. So we started with the Cathedral, and we needed a few more bays, so the guys built the Chapel, which is a smaller version of the Cathedral. So we would store about 350,000 tons of barley in the Cathedral. And if you were to take the walls and the bays out of it, that shed would easily hold 7 or 8,000 tons.
So again, you're under-utilizing that facility, but if we don't have that and the segregation of each farm and each bay, the project doesn't work.
So again, we're looking at it, and what do we need, and what did we need to put in place to ensure that each farm was kept separate?

Interviewer:
Right. Now, what we should probably talk about is your three types of expressions. So you have your Single Farm origin, your Arcadian series, and your cuvées. Do you want to tell us a little bit more about each of those three?

Ned Gahan:
Yeah. So our Single Farm origins are single farms. So, what we've done at the start is our first two releases that were Single Farms were Bannow Island 1.1 and Ballykilcavan 1.1. And what we look at is exactly that; a single farm. And we look to put it into a bottle to try and showcase the farm, the barley, the spirit, the whisky, in its best light. Okay? So the first ones we released were probably about three and a half years old. They're getting a bit older. I think the oldest Single Farm we've release is probably a little over four years old.
The Arcadian series then is a break from the conventional barley. So the Arcadian series looks at organic barley, biodynamic barely, and heritage grains. So I think everyone is fairly familiar with organics and that; so when we started, we had six organic farmers who grew for us. And I suppose the farmers didn't grow enough commercially for single farms at the time.
So we brought the farmers together, and that came in as one batch. So our first organic was a mixture of those six farms together in a batch.
But since that, we've had, I think the last two years we've had three farmers, organic farmers, who have grown enough barley for Single Farms, single batches. They would have went from maybe supplying 40 tons of green barley, to now supplying 120 tons of green barley. So there's enough for a single batch. So that was a huge step for them. Again, because they wanted to be involved, and there's an outlet for their organic barley, a commercial outlet. So that's the organics.
The Arcadian then is, I suppose, a quest into flavour, if that makes sense, in that, one of the things we found in the Terroir Project is that barley varieties actually have less of an impact on the flavour than we anticipated. And the main reason for that is because over the years, it's a commercial barley, right? So barleys are cross-bred to give you yield; yield to the farmer, yield to the brewery or the distillery, and also to be able to stand up to climate. So, as the yield for a farmer gets better, that means he has a heavier head, and the straw needs to hold the head up. But if you have wind and rain, that will lodge. So you have to develop a straw, as well as the barley, that can cope with that. And also, pests and diseases that attack the barley over a period of time, they get used to what's being used, and they go and attack the barley. So every few years, barley is cross-bred to get a better commercial barley, if that makes sense.
That kind of started around the 1950s. So, an actual fact, the barleys you have now, if you were to do a lineage on it, are brothers, sisters, half brothers or sisters or cousins. So they have the same lineage going a long way back.
So we started looking at barleys pre-, kind of 1960s. The first one we looked at was a variety called Hunter, which was discontinued about 1955, 56, I think. Then we looked at a variety called Gold Harp, which was discontinued about 1902 or 1903. And we've also done a variety called Old Irish, which is pre-1900.
So, what's involved in this is a long and slow process. So, each seed that was used in Ireland is contained in a seed bank by the Department of Agriculture. You can go and buy some of that seed and grow it.
So when we started, you buy only a few grams, and Mitch Malt then will grow it up first. So it would take a couple of years to get enough grain to sow commercially. When we say commercially, it's a few acres rather than a plot of a little bit.
But it takes few times to get to that. And the other thing then is, when you sow it, the reasons is was discontinued are still there. It doesn't yield very well.
So normal barley on a good year, a farmer would look to get maybe 3, 3.5 tons/acre. And some of the heritage grains might be 1.5 tons to the acre, in or around that.
There's a big difference. So when that grain is, or the barley is sown, it's obviously susceptible then to the diseases that will attack it. And also, that it tends to lodge, so it's much harder to combine or to process. But what we are looking for is flavour.
It's flavour. More, unadulterated flavour, so it's more flavour from that barley. So we hopefully, within 12 months, hopefully, we will have our first Heritage grain, which will be Hunter, in release.
And obviously, when we distill it here, we get a lot lower yield. Now, we're not driven by yield. We are driven by the quality of spirit. But the figures, if we normally look for 95%, which is probably a lot less than normal as well, with the Heritage grains, you're probably, you could be down around 80%.
So, it's not very profitable, it's not very good; but the flavours are totally different.
And I suppose the final one then, is the... I didn't mention, is the biodynamics. So we were the world's first, biodynamic whisky there, this year called Luna, so its a nod to the moon; which is, one of the driving factors in biodynamics farming. So basically, what the biodynamic farmer is doing is looking at having his soil in harmony with the earth, which sells hairy, fairy. It sounds ridiculous, but it's basically going back to the old ways of farming.
So, when we started, we had three farmers combined to give us roughly about 50 or maybe 45 tons of malt barley. So it's very small; biodynamics will yield maybe in or around a ton, little bit more, a little bit less, depending on the weather and acre.
But the flavours from the biodynamic are just so different. Again, it's going to sound like I'm spinning a line here, but it's more earthy, it's more barley, it's more soil. Because if you think about it, they don't use any artificial additives. Okay? It's like organics and a step further. They use the lunar calendar to sow and to harvest.
They will actually put preparations on the soils. Okay? Which one of them is they will bury cow horns in the ground that's filled with dung, and leave that ferment; take it up, put it into rainwater, and then spray it on the land. It sounds a bit mad, and it is slightly mad, but it's a philosophy that's used in a lot of the winemakers; and some of the top wine makers in the world are biodynamic wines. They just don't talk about it.
What they also do is they also lessen the impact on the ground. So they won't, if they can at all possible, they won't use tractors. They won't go out and use tractors unnecessarily. They will, maybe if they have to do something, if they had a quad, they might use that. In wine making, a lot of horses are used. What you want is you want the roots to go down as deep as possible into the ground. Because if you think of it, when you're using fertilisers, you put that on top of the ground. And that goes down a little bit, so the plant doesn't have to work to get its nutrients.
The roots will stay there. Yeah. So when you're using, when you're biodynamically growing something, the roots have to go looking for nutrients.
And they're in this way, they're there. A hundred percent. It's going back to its roots, pardon the pun. And also, they're looking at worm activity. They looking to make sure that the soil is naturally aerated. One of the things I asked one of the farmers is, "Can you explain to me what is biodynamic farming?" And he looked at me and he said, "Oh, I could tell you all day." But what he actually said to me was probably summed it up really well. When a biodynamic farmer is looking at a field and sees a weed growing, he wants to know why is the nutrient going to the weed and not to the barley plant, or whatever plant is growing. And he wants to know then what imbalance is in the soil that that weed has grown. And that really summed it up succinctly for me. So they're basically custodians of the soil; that's the way the see it. They want to have the soil as healthy as possible, in balance with the earth, with Mother Nature for another word. We all know about the tides and the moon; and they believe that it affects the soil. Because you'll hear in vineyards and wine making in biodynamics, they talk about earth soil, which sounds funny. Water soil, wind soil, fire soil. So they know what their soil is and they're able to look after the soil to the best, to make sure that the plants that are growing there, whatever they are, get exactly what they need to give you the best plant, be it a grape, barley, or whatever.
So basically, farming or gardening in its purest farm, if that makes sense.

Interviewer:
Right. When you got into distilling, did you ever think that you were going to know so much about barley?

Ned Gahan:
No. No. Because when I started, I came from Diageo. I worked for Diageo for 15 years, great company. And I joined the team from day one in the distillery. And I didn't know anything about making whisky. This is my first whisky job; so I'm learning every day. And one of the things that I learned and was surprised at initially was, Irish whisky doesn't have to use Irish barley. Now, I understand there's not enough barley in Ireland to keep everyone distilling and brewing. But I just, I never even thought that the barley could come from somewhere else. I just assumed it was Irish. That was it. So that was the first thing. And when I got involved in it, and started looking at it, I was saying, "Why wouldn't you look at barley? It's your raw ingredient.” Your cask is not your raw ingredient. Your water is not... It's part of it, but your raw ingredient, your starting point, your flavour starting point is barley. 100%. And you can... We have single malt; you can have malt barley, you can have unmalted barley, you can have whatever else you want. You can make it whatever way you want; but it still comes down to the ingredient. Your first ingredient is your barley.

Interviewer:
Some might say that your timing couldn't have been better, as the world is very much rediscovering the virtues of Irish whisky. Are you finding that the interest is in what you are doing, or the interest is in more the fact that you just are Irish?

Ned Gahan:
A bit of both, I'd imagine. One of the things that we don't do, is we don't... We're not probably aligned as much with the Irish whisky, because some people would say we're not actually an Irish whisky because we double distill. And an actual fact to be an Irish whisky, you should triple distill. And we've heard that from several places and several people; but actually, to be Irish whisky, you can double or triple distill. We don't spell whisky with an E, so some people say, "Why are you spelling it the Scotch way?" And again, we can spell it with or without an E. We choose not to use the E. And again, that's probably going back to historic, the way whisky used to be spelled.
So, when we're looking at the timing, it's a bit of both. I think it's a bit of a resurgence in Irish whisky, but also a lot of interest in what we are doing. One of the main marketers, our main marketer is actually France. We were over there last year for our workforce show, and blown away by the interest. And the fact that we didn't have to explain terroir, we didn't have to explain organics, our biodynamics, was unbelievable. So, France is probably our biggest market at the moment. Canada has actually turned out to be a really big market. And again, I'd say it's because of maybe the French influence there. So it's a bit of a ‘rising tide lifts all boats’. So everyone, that's either in Ireland or associated with Irish whisky, but it think a lot of it is interest in Waterford,

Interviewer:
Now, being a single malt, I imagine that you would say mixing it into a cocktail would be absolute heresy. So how do you want people to experience it?

Ned Gahan:
Everyone is different. Everyone has a different way of enjoying whiskey. I know our whisky is a natural whisky. So what I mean by that is there's no additives. There's no E150A. We don't chill filter it. And it's at 50%, so it's a little bit stronger than normal. I think whatever way people enjoy our whiskey. So if it's with a Coke, if it's as part of cocktail, enjoy it. So our whiskey has lots of flavours. Each one is a unique whisky. But the backbone of it, the spirit, is because the way we distill it and the whole lot. It's a light spirit; it's a light, elegant spirit.
So if there's a cocktail out there that would lend itself to that, I would say, that's the kind of cocktail that you would look at.

Interviewer:
Now, before we finish up, we missed cuvee. So, if we can just quickly talk about that.

Ned Gahan:
So the cuvee is a bringing together of farms. So, what I'm doing with the Single Farm is showcasing that farm to the best of its ability. And with the cuvee, it's bringing together a number of farms. So the first cuvee that we launched commercially, I suppose our first one was the Pilgrimage. But our first big release there recently, the cuvee itself was an amalgamation of 25 farms, 156 casks. And that's giving... What I want to do with the cuvees is give as much complexity, as possible when you smell and taste it. And I think in the wine terms, you have singular estates, and the state is, or the farm is the king as such. And when you look at a cuvee, be it wine, or be it whisky, the person putting it together is the king. And that sounds a bit-

Interviewer:
So it's the blend more than the-

Ned Gahan:
Yeah. Yeah. It sounds a bit pretentious, but you are bringing it together to showcase all the flavours, your distillery style, together. So we have micro cuvees, which are small bottlings, and we're going to look at bringing out four seasonal ones this year: so spring, summer, autumn, and winter, hopefully. And we will try and replicate what you would expect in summer, winter, and spring and autumn in the flavours, in the nose.
So that's what the cuvee is. It's a marriage of the farms.

Interviewer:
What is it that you want people to take away from their experience with Waterfords?

Ned Gahan:
That they enjoy it.
It's as simple as that. I think some people would be interested in the whisky taste, smell, full stop. Some people are less interested maybe in the whisky, and more interested in the traceability. On the back of each our bottles, there's a terroir code. And if you go into our website, and where it says terroir, click that; you put the code in, and you get some of the information associated with that bottle.
On each Single Farm, we have roughly 8,000 data points. You won't get them all. This is a bespoke purpose-built, track and trace system for us. So we know when the field was sown, and everything and I mean everything, that happens to that barley until it gets into the bottle. That includes chemicals, fertilisers used on the barley, malting information, distilling information, cask information, everything.
And so, you have people who are really interested in that. Okay? So I think there's something for everyone. But primarily for me, it' you are enjoying the whiskey. When you smell it, you smile. And when you drink it, you smile.
Interviewer:
Now, if people want more information Waterford, they can, of course, go to your website, which is waterfordwhisky. Without an E, .com. Or alternatively, find you on your socials.

Ned Gahan:
Yeah. So I suppose we're across a wide range on socials. We're on Twitter and Instagram. So, we do lot of information sharing and stuff on the social medias. And I think it's a good way of people getting a snapshot, or being able to investigate what we're talking about, or what we're interested in.

Interviewer:
That's great. Well, look, Ned, thank you so much for your time.

Ned Gahan:
No problem at all, Tiff. I really enjoyed that.