We all have our own heroes in life. It might be a former employee or manager who has influenced you professionally and inspired you in your workplace. It might be a family member, perhaps a parent, whose battles through hardship has given you the confidence to fight your own battles. Your hero might not even be someone you know personally, like a sporting hero.
There might be no industry with a greater number of heroes who have passed on their skills and knowledge through an unfathomable number of years than the whisky industry. Within the many decades (and sometimes centuries) a distillery has existed for, a fountain of knowledge, technique, and talent has had to pass through multiple generations in order to keep any one brand’s whisky at a consistently high level. In many instances, today’s master distillers and master blenders were once assistants, spending years learning about the specific techniques under the tutorage of the master distiller or master blender before them.
Just recently I spoke with Highland Park’s master whisky maker Gordon Motion for a piece on the Whisky Magazine website. Gordon started out as the assistant to the previous master whisky quality manager for 10 years, and took on the mantle once he retired. This is common practice for so many distilleries, and some have repeated this process for many decades.
This issue explores the mantles that have been handed over between masters and their protégés: fathers and their daughters, and whisky heroes to the many people they have inspired. Harry Brennan has written an inspirational piece on the many talented women in the industry, some of whom have taken over their family distilleries from their fathers or founded their own: Kristy Lark-Booth, Sophie Newsome, Anna Buchholz, Jasmin Haider, and Lea Weßel. Their stories give a glimpse of the tremendous generation of women in whisky who are learning from their family legacies and accelerating them even further. I am writing this column just a couple of days after International Women’s Day, and I have no doubt all of these women will be cited as influential in the industry as the years progress.
Perhaps this issue’s most storied example of baton-passing in the industry is Chris Middleton’s historic feature on James Crow and Edmund Taylor — two men who had a shared aspiration to change the course of the bourbon industry in the US. The sheer number of whisky-making giants influenced by the work of these men is almost too mind-boggling to comprehend, such is the power of training generations in only the finest production methods.
In preparation for next month’s Spirit of Speyside Festival, this issue also features our annual Speyside review, as well as a preview of the festival’s Whisky School. There is perhaps no better way to influence and train a generation of whisky creators than through education, and truly, where better in the world to do so than Speyside? While the industry is full of recognisable names you can be inspired from, there may not be anything more influential to a whisky lover than Speyside, and its incomprehensible number of beloved Scotch brands all in one area. If you’ve never had the opportunity to visit, make sure to put it on your bucket list, particularly around the time of the Spirit of Speyside Whisky Festival.
The second half of this issue celebrates the award-winning people, places, and products in the industry with the World Whiskies Awards, Icons of Whisky, and the latest Whisky Magazine Hall of Fame inductees. It’s only appropriate that in an issue where we celebrate those passing on their greatness to the next generation, that we also remain present and focus on that greatness being put to work, and put on our shelves, today.
With so much uncertainty in the world and in the whisky industry at the moment, focusing on the positives and feeling inspired can be reinvigorating. I hope that you can sit back with your favourite dram and enjoy this bumper issue of the magazine, and take a great deal of inspiration from the many greats and whisky heroes featured, both past and present.
