I was recently interviewed by someone in the whisky industry for a postgraduate research project they’re undertaking about the rate of, and resistance to, change in the whisky industry. During our discourse, I was asked to give three words that I associated strongly with whisky. One of those I chose was ‘barley’ (likely informed by the fact that a significant percentage of the whisky content we come into contact with through this magazine relates to Scotch whiskies, and more specifically single malts). It led to an interesting discussion about the continuing predominance of single malt whiskies in global production and the marketplace, despite the fact that barley is not a universally applicable cereal crop.

One of the greatest benefits that whiskies made with barley have is regulatory protection. The definition of single malt Scotch whisky, as laid out in the Scotch Whisky Regulations (2009), has become the framework for similar denomination of origin applications for Welsh and English single malts. The Japanese whisky guidelines put forward by the Japan Spirits and Liqueurs Makers Association in 2021 make special provision for malt whiskies, while in the US, the American Single Malt Whiskey Commission has been striving to secure a formal standard of identity for the category for years.

In a discussion with Dutch whisky news site Whisky Monkeys last year, the founder of Scotland’s InchDairnie Distillery Ian Palmer revealed some frustration about category definitions with regard to the distillery’s RyeLaw whisky. Legally, it has to be termed a single grain Scotch whisky as the Scotch Whisky Association (SWA) has no formalised categorisation for rye whiskies (unlike, for example, the US). Islay’s Bruichladdich Distillery encountered the same when it launched its rye-based whisky, the Regeneration Project, in March 2023.

Palmer told Whisky Monkeys that he felt the ‘single grain’ label was confusing for consumers and that, in an ideal world, RyeLaw would be labelled as a ‘single distillery rye’ instead — a change he is in discussions with the SWA to try and effect.

Sacha La Forgia at Australia’s 78 Degrees Distillery experienced similar wrangles over the distillery’s first whiskies produced with native grains (as we reported in issue 197). Its first Native Grain Whiskey, produced with wattleseed, was technically not a whisky in the eyes of the (lenient) Australian law as wattleseed isn’t a cereal grain. The second iteration in the series, distilled with weeping grass, was permissible.

Australia is one of the most exciting countries to watch with regard to grain whiskies precisely because of the relative flexibility in how ‘whisky’ is legally defined. It’s a theme echoed in other regions with less well-established whisky industries; in this issue, for example, we discover the story of Nestville Distillery in Slovakia which is distilling with traditional eastern European grain triticale.

While weeping grass whisky is all well and good, you don’t have to go so off-piste to explore the nuances that distilling different grains can bring. Just look at the so-called ‘heirloom’ grain varieties being explored in the US. Distilleries including Jeptha Creed and Widow Jane have made whiskeys using bloody butcher corn, while Balcones in Texas uses blue corn in its Baby Blue whiskey. Pennsylvania’s Stoll and Wolfe has distilled spirit with Rosen rye, a varietal with roots in Russia, and New Riff in Kentucky has produced a whiskey with heirloom Balboa rye.

We can also consider proposed updates to the technical file for Irish single pot still whiskey, which currently states that non-barley grains can comprise no more than 5 per cent of the mash bill. Imagine if that number was raised into double digits, as proponents of the legislative change suggest is more historically accurate. With higher and more varied proportions of oats, rye, wheat, or maize (to name a few), the potential for flavour diversity increases significantly.

Grain whisky is simultaneously desired and derided for the simplicity of its flavours, but when those grains are handled with care and expertise, the outcome can be game changing.