REOPENS AFTER 40 YEARS
Port Ellen, once the remnants of a "ghost" distillery on Islay, a great source of peated whisky in Scotland, is now an ultra exclusive distillery with a luxurious and polished blueprint.
Port Ellen was founded in 1825 on the island of Islay, known for its smoky whiskies. For more than 150 years, the distillery produced peated whisky, which was mostly used for blends as opposed to single malts. In 1983, the workhorse distillery closed due to an excess of single malt whisky production in the area. The surplus forced a number of whisky-making locations to close in order to promote the financial robustness of larger companies.
In the years since, the site was used for malting barley. That didn’t last long. As whisky fans, collectors, and aficionados discovered there were still barrels of Port Ellen whisky hidden away in warehouses around Scotland, the liquid gained in popularity—and increased in price. In 2017, parent company Diageo announced that the distillery would be rebuilt and reopened.
There are several highly regarded ghost distilleries throughout Scotland, a term that refers to distilleries that were shuttered decades ago but still release whisky from barrels tucked away in warehouses throughout the country. Some of the prominent ones are Auchnagie, Stratheden, Gerston, Lossit and Towiemore, among others. But none as familiar as Port Ellen and its astronomical prices when released by parent company Diageo. The distillery officially reopened end March 2024 after seven years and a £185 million investment.
The new Port Ellen distillery has a completely fresh design, featuring a glass stillhouse, two pairs of copper pot stills that are exact replicas of the original stills, and a set of experimental stills that will be used for smaller batch whiskies (whisky production got underway early this year). The rest of the distillery was completely modernised as well, including the roller mill, the laboratory, the spirit safe, and a sustainability effort that has made it completely carbon neutral. The team is also launching a special programme to study smoke, which will use algorithmic imagery to decipher how the peat levels in the whisky respond to aging.
Port Ellen was a flavour factory for creating a sweet, smoky type of Islay whisky. For the reopening of Port Ellen, what they wanted to do was create two different styles of whisky there, that still had the same style that Port Ellen was known for. What they wanted to do was recreate the stills to the exact specifications as they were before it closed in 1983.
Among the eight million items within Diageo’s renowned alcohol archive lie the blueprints for the stills of Port Ellen from decades ago. The originals have been recreated. While some of the once-abandoned features of the distillery were replicated, Port Ellen reopened with a number of modern improvements and functional elements.
Port Ellen is a private oasis, and visitors will need to request an appointment in advance. Walk-ins are encouraged at other distilleries on Islay, including Caol IIa and Lagavulin. Visitors finish up with a tasting of some of the liquid from that distillery from before it closed in 1983 as a luxury experience.
The transformed construction subtly nods to the history of the ghost of Port Ellen, but there is one timeless relic that is crucial to today’s whisky emergence. Iain McArthur, a former employee of Port Ellen, recently retired after a noteworthy career in whisky making. The remnant cask that is presently being used by Port Ellen to create Gemini, a newly released whisky, was saved by McArthur before the original distillery closed down.
He took it from Port Ellen to Lagavulin, and that's what Diageo took back to Port Ellen for the recent bottling. This was a critical, intrinsic part in, not only the distillery story, but also in saving that wonderful barrel.
THE ANALYSES
For two years, Diageo analyzed various Scotch whiskies using AI and algorithms. They invested $230 million in a portfolio of whisky tourism projects. A portion of this lump sum was dedicated to the exploration of whisky maturation using technology called SmokeDNAi.
The announcement of SmokeDNAi comes on the heels of Port Ellen’s reopening in Scotland after 40 years with modern advancements to both construction and whisky-making.
Using SmokeDNAi, teams tested and analysed the flavour profiles and mouthfeel of non-identical twin whiskies distilled in different casks – one remnant and one original. The pair of rare whiskies is named Port Ellen Gemini, and each bottle costs $50,000.
The purpose of the analysis is to better understand whisky aging in a barrel.
SmokeDNAi technology: SmokeDNAi technology is used by Diageo to test and analyze mouth-feel and flavors of liquids from different casks. They want to have a slow maturation in a barrel where they’re controlling the flavour. They get a much better understanding of why they taste the way they taste, or why they smell the way they smell, or the mouth-feel.
Between two whisky casks from Port Ellen, the vanilla characteristic, vanillin, varied. One cask contained around 3%, while the other included more than double, around 6%. The remnant cask contained liquors from the 1960s and 1980s. Port Ellen can leverage data sets in order to maximize production, flavour and sales of whisky and new blends in the future.
Using samples of whisky, the liquid is put through a chemical analysis process, gas chromatography or liquid chromatography, and data sets of distinct components are broken down by an algorithm. Diageo then uses SmokeDNAi technology and Out of the Ether designs to create a visualization of the flavour profiles of liquors.
WHISKY vs WHISKEY: THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE BROWN LIQUORS
It basically takes a signature of that liquid, and then it gives analysts a reading or a spike reading of the different compounds that are in there. Diageo wanted to do was demystify that and make it easy. Diageo also sought to offer consumers taste and flavour through sight. Out of the Ether, "an algorithmic machine generated work of art that harnesses SmokeDNAi technology," according to Diageo, produces imagery of whisky smoke over time. Design experts, in collaboration with Bose Collins, worked to produce visuals that are more easily digested by a consumer versus data sets.
They have, for example, an overlay with the chemical name like vanillin, which smells and tastes like vanilla. Here, whisky enthusiasts can gaze at flavour combinations, aromas and unambiguous profiles that wouldn’t be visible to the naked eye.
On the visual, observers will see the small amounts of one particle that moves around. Then, there's a larger cloud in there and then that will show them the percentile of these compounds that sit in there. Visual profiles may include a combination of coconut, smoky, earthy, medicinal, floral and sweet flavours. It gives the observer a really great, at a glance, visualisation of what's going on inside the barrel, a much, much clearer understanding of your own whisky.
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