First off Mr. Gilchrist, thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to answer some of our questions. Q1 - How long have you been working at Bowmore? I have been with Morrison Bowmore
Distillers for around six years. Before that I worked for their then UK Distributor as a Brands Manager for Bowmore for another four years more. Before that, during my career in Spirits marketing I have had experience on such brands as
Macallan, Langs Whiskies, Glengoyne Malt Whisky, Isle Of Jura Malt Whisky and Mackinlay's Whiskies - some names from the past! Q2 - What is a typical day for you at the distillery? Actually our Head Office is
not situated at a distillery. We are based in the centre of Glasgow, Scotland. Here we have the blending & bottling facility together with all the other HO functions such as Marketing, Accounts, Production Sales etc. Q3 - What is your favorite part of the job? It all really. There is no one part that stands out - it is so varied. We do have great fun designing & developing new styles and the packaging to go
around them. We have a good group of Distributors around the globe but they do keep us busy - whether developing promotional activity, advertising or even PR initiatives. We meet with the Key Distributors regularly and discuss our
central strategy for our brands and how they can implement it in their marketplace - to ensure a global strategy is in place. Each market is at a different stage of Malt Whisky maturity and so this is quite a meeting of minds. Still,
Bowmore is booming around the globe so we must all be doing something right. Q4 - What do you attribute to the boom of single malt scotch in recent years? Availability. First through the Specialists who began
to take an interest in the category and now through to the Multiples who have, in very recent years, begun to list a number of Malts. Coupled with this, a number of good Malt Writers around the globe who have managed to explain the
category - much like the wine writers have done for many more years. This coupled with good marketing. (I would say that though!) In reality, most Malt Whisky went into the former Blended Whisky Market and so nobody had really marketed
Single Malts until the past few decades. Then somebody realised that great Single Malts were being turned into average Blended Whiskies - amazing it took them so long to work it out.
Q5 - What characteristics do you think constitutes a great whisky? Now there's a question ! and probably 'character' is the answer. There are so many Malt Whiskies around you need something special to get to the
top. Probably our confidence comes mostly from the liquid in the bottle - before you add all the other elements which we dream up to support it, such as packaging, advertising & promotion. I/we truly believe in the product - it is
such a good dram, whatever the age or finish. This is the most crucial factor in our growth over recent years. The Distillery team produce the great whisky and many years later we bring it to market. But if it was not good we
would not get the repeat purchase and we would not grow. So put it down to the team at the Distillery in the first instance. At Bowmore Distillery, on Islay, the team have more years of experience between them than possibly any
other product or production facility you could name (whatever the product) and this gives us unparalleled consistency of production. Q6 - Names like Bowmore, Lagavulin, Laphroaig, and Ardbeg are considered be top notch malts,
if not powerhouses. What makes Islay such a breeding ground for producing top caliber malts in your opinion? In my opinion, simply because they are not 'simple' malts. Each has a character all of its own and each, partly
because of the island location, has had continuity of working practice and, crucially, the workforce over the years. This continuity of workforce has meant that all the experience has been passed down over the generations, from father to
son to grandson - and it really works when you have a product which is distilled by one generation and bottled by the next or even the next - they all take great pride in their art. I think that many of the mainland competitors miss this
continuity. You will see when you visit the island, or perhaps I should say you will 'feel', the warm of the Islay people - in my opinion it also shines through the whiskies.
Q7 - Is there any friendly competition amongst the distilleries on Islay? Yes, but I'm not sure if we really see it as competition in the true sense of the word. Because we all have different products there is a place
for each. Tastes vary amongst consumers - your readers will each have their own favourite - either overall or for a particular time or place. I don't think that we fight amongst ourselves, we are all taking on the, current, market
leaders and possibly the Blended whiskies, to grow our shares. Islay whiskies have a quality all of their own and we are very proud of them all.
Q8 - Why has Bowmore chosen to market such a broad range of official bottlings? Basically, because we could. It may sound flippant but we found that much of the competition just did not have the portfolio of whiskies available
to them so one way we could differentiate Bowmore from the competition was to provide a wider age / style range - a major USP for us. Much of the competition had used their older age stocks either in their core brand or had whittled them
away into Blended Whiskies over the years. Bowmore, having been family owned for many years still had much of the 'family silver' still intact. We are, carefully, bringing this to market but still keeping much up our sleeves - for a
rainy day! Q9 - Do you have any particular favorite within the Bowmore range? Like many, I like Bowmore 17 Years Old. But some of our more
recent additions such as Darkest, Claret, Dusk and Voyage are great in their own right. Q10 - What was the actual age of Bowmore Surf? Well, as you know, we do not declare an age on Surf. In reality it is
similar to Legend in the Domestic marketplace, around 8 Years Old. (Surf being available in the Travel Retail marketplace) Q11 - What exactly goes into the Cask Strength? Again, there is not an age declared on
Cask Strength. So the answer I give today should not be taken as gospel for all eternity. For the case of this interview I can say that today the product is a minimum of 12-13 Years Of Age. You basically take a Single Malt and
don't reduce it to the standard strength of 40% or 43% - just leave it at the nominal cask strength of 56%, simple really. Many consumers like the higher strength as it gives another aspect to the dram.
Q12 - What proportion of malt is casked in first fill sherry, refill sherry, With the 12 Years Old, 15 Years Old
and 17 Years Old the recipe is similar; each is made up with (approximately) 30% Oloroso Sherry Butts, a mixture of First & Second Fill, the remaining 70% is American Ex-Bourbon Casks. This 70% is broken down as (approximately) the
first 20% being First Fill and the remaining 50% being second fill. Q13 - It seems that Bowmore switches direction in the older bottlings. The 21 and
25 are much mellower than the Mariner. Even the 17 is in that direction. Do you select certain casks to be older bottlings? And if so, what criteria are used? No, as I said earlier, all Bowmore Single Malt is produced in
exactly the same way. Certain casks are left aside / planned to be left aside for the older ages but, as you will know, the age on the bottle is the minimum age so a 21 Years Old could have ages higher than that in the bottle. The
reason it is mellower is because of the maturation process. It sleeps in its cask and does change over the years - don't let anyone tell you otherwise. You used to get many an old blender tell the tale that whisky did not change
after ten or twelve years but it was just not true. Sure it does not change if you put it into glass at ten or twelve years but leave it in a cask and the maturation continues - and it generally mellows. The peat recedes and the
various flavours of the wood come through. Best way to see this is to pick up one of our Miniature Collection Drums. They contain Legend, 12 years Old, 17 Years Old and 21 Years Old - try them from the youngest through to the
oldest and you will see the development through the years. A Vertical Tasting like no other. Q14 - What made Bowmore decide to use new and different styles of finishing we see in the Claret, Voyage, and Dusk bottlings?
Boy, you did get a good number of questions together! It really started for us with Black Bowmore. We found some old sherry casks of Bowmore with an amazing spirit inside and decided that rather than just use them in
one of our standard age bottling we would bring them out as a limited edition - we knew they were extra special. After their success and the massive prices they began to command at auction, we decided that we should attempt to produce a
sherry casked Bowmore for the wider market. To replicate Black Bowmore we would need both luck and thirty years of maturation so we took some 12 Years Old Bowmore, selected some choice sherry casks, and matured it for a further period to
see what would happen. Luck WAS on our side because when we looked at it after two years it had turned into what you now know as Bowmore Darkest. I should point out that we did look at it several times during these two years and at
only one year, although it was good, we did not think it was the great dram we were looking for. However, when we got close to the two years additional maturation we all agreed we had a winner and designed up Darkest to bring it to
market. It is still only available in limited quantities but, because of the two year process, it does enable us to produce a Sherry Casked Bowmore in a more realistic timescale than the unique Black Bowmore - it is known as 'Son of
Black Bowmore' within our team. Claret , Dusk and Voyage have followed on from this initial maturation programme. We selected some really unique Claret casks and carried out the same trials - again, after two additional years
of 'finishing' we found the best balance and, since this time, have decided that we should always finish these whiskies for around two years - and have a programme in place to achieve this. We think that this is the reason our Bowmore
finishes have shone out from some of the competitors who we know finish their products for much lesser periods - and achieve their own results. Q15 - What is in store for Bowmore in the future? Well, that would
be telling. All I can really say is that we have steady growth plans - and that quality whisky is what we see as the key to our growth - so no take-over of the world market in the short term just steady growth in line with our maturing
stocks. Q16 - Any new bottlings in the years to come? Perhaps some more Black Bowmore, that is supposed to be as I know it is not likely, and hey, you can always dream.? Yes there will be further new
bottlings. But, as you can imagine, we lay whiskies down today to mature and be bottled generally between ten, twenty and thirty years from today. So we are working with whiskies today many of which were distilled in the sixties,
seventies and eighties. How many products or businesses work on such timescales ? There could be another Black Bowmore in the No1 Vaults - you will just have to wait and see.
On behalf of Malt Madness, thank you very much Mr. Gilchrist. It was a pleasure. Derek M. Gilchrist
So here we go!
In addition, I note you say 'official bottlings' and this is a good point because we believe that you only get the truly 'great' Bowmore Malts from the source. An unofficial bottling is not really the same thing. It
has not been warehoused at Bowmore, on Islay, in the damp cellars, by the sea and does not have the same characteristics at all. It may be 'interesting' and it is probably a good dram in its own right but it is unlikely to be a great example
of a true Bowmore. Such casks could have been warehoused anywhere on mainland Scotland. They could have been badly maintained, had poor climate control or even been moved into other casks at some time, who knows? That is why we
never make comment on such whiskies - and we do get asked. We would hate to see a consumer faced with his first Bowmore from an unofficial bottling -there are just too many variables, out with our control, which could damage the
maturation process - much better paying for the real thing in my book.
first fill bourbon and refill bourbon in the 12 yo?
Does the proportion change in the Mariner 15 and 17?
All of the above is approximate as all depends on individual cask quality.
Marketing Director - Whisky
Morrison Bowmore Distillers Limited
Patrick Whaley -
Click HERE for an overview of other articles in MM#1.
<-- Back to MM#1
Some time before the actual launch of Malt Maniacs (in August 2000, to be precise) our
dashing American correspondent Patrick Whaley did an interview with Derek M. Gilchrist, Marketing Director at Morrison Bowmore Distillers Limited. It's still a very interesting and enlightening read, especially because some of the mysterious
new whiskies Derek raves about have now actually reached shelves around the world.
E-pistle #01/01 - An interview with Derek 'Bowmore' Gilchrist
by Patrick Whaley
, USA