Dennis Malcolm, Master Distiller at the Glen Grant

You know, when you're young, you want to conquer the world. There's no right or wrong way to block and fight. There's a gray area; if somebody makes a mistake or sleeps in, you can usually get away with it. So that's a good time to come in. Years of experience that teaches you that.

I finished my time within casks, which I really enjoyed. I was curious how the whisky was made because my father and grandfather made it as well. So I decided I wanted to find out all about that liquid. I worked my way through all the processes. It took a good few years. I learned everything I could on the shifts for many years - six years, actually. And an opportunity came up for me to be the production manager. They offered it initially to one of the older guys, and unfortunately, or luckily for me, he took ill.

So there I was, at the age of 24, running a distillery. You know, the manager must have had a lot of faith in me that I was keen to do it. Most production managers have to work years in different jobs, ranging from mashing to fermentation to distillation. You might spend 30-40 years and hold all of these different jobs before you are considered to run a facility. So, I grabbed the chance to do this.

I knew I wouldn't feel the “how did I know that?” because all the guys working with me had easily been there 30-40 years. They had hundreds of years of experience in making the whisky. I was young with bags of energy and good listening skills. They weren’t going to let me fail.

I was very lucky in that respect. That eventually became my first manager's job — managing Glenlivet, which was owned by the same company. I wanted to conquer the world. They moved me back to Glen Grant, and I ran both distilleries and the cooperage and did that for a few years until 1992. And then I became General Manager. It was lovely. I was keeping myself busy and gaining more and more experience as I went and learned different ways of working.

Well, I don’t know if I live in a distillery or if I live in a house. It's a big plus if you're quite busy because you can just pop up and sit with your wife for a couple of hours late for tea, or you can pop home early and have your team and then go back to work. I used to do that a lot because when there were clear summer nights in Scotland, I would go home at five o'clock, have my tea, work in the garden for a couple of hours, and then go back around eight at night. And you know something, if you're working from nine at night to two to three in the morning, you forget the time. Everything gets done; you get a lot more work done because you don't get interfered with phone calls. And I get most of the things done that way.

The first thing I do every morning is shake hands with The Major. In 1992, the company knocked down the mansion house that the founder, James Grant Major, lived in. There were these huge, eight-foot-tall oak doors there from when the house was built in 1840. When they were knocking it down in a controlled burn, I said, “Don't burn my doors, take them off. I'll keep them and put them on my house someday.” I started building my house some 18 years ago, and I put the doors on there. It's the same big brass knobs, so I like to say I'm shaking hands with Major every day.

The brand has been reborn again. I'm saying that because The Glen Grant was bought in 1979 by Seagrams at the time. There was no innovation there. It was just the standard Glen Grant 5 Year Old. We had a non-aged called The Majors Reserve and a small amount of 10 Years Old, which we sold in the visitor center, maybe 3,000 bottles a year. At this time, the brand was tiny.

When Campari bought us, they didn’t launch The Glen Grant all over the world. They were very, very wise, I thought. They did incremental, strong, solid steps. And now, some 16 years later, instead of just having three basic brands, we have about 14 different expressions. We had the 5 Year Old, the Major’s, and the 10 Year Old. That's all we had. We still have those three. But, now we have Arboralis, 10, 12 Year Old, the 15 Year Old, and the 18 Years Old aged. We have a core range for Global Travel Retail. We did a limited 50 Year Old and the Five Decades for my 50 year anniversary. We also released an expression for the 170 year anniversary of the distillery in 2010.

We have in the pipeline for the next few years some new expressions that will be released. I created some new ones — it’s too early to speak about them just now. Watch this space because Glen Grant has been reborn, and it's growing again. We are going to be fairly well recognized in the industry for the contribution that Campari Group has made to allow us to create all these expressions. You've got to acknowledge the huge investment Campari has put into the company to buy back stone dunnage warehouses, lay down stocks for the future, and make sure work at Glen Grant is a super premium single malt Scotch whisky.

I did create one for my 50 years, but that was somewhat different because I used whisky from every decade I've been here — the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 2000s, some from each of the Five Decades. But, for the 60 Years Old, we looked at some individual casks. We thought we'd bottle one cask, just like I'm one person. Not a collective amount of different casks, just myself and one cask.

On the nose, it's vibrant, like ripe Seville oranges. And that gives way to fruits and nuts. I'm speaking about delicate fruits, like peaches and apricots, and soft, tropical fruit. The nuts would be pecan nuts. And there's a little hint of smoke there in the background. On the taste, it’s this richness and fruitiest coming through that’s very dominant. You get the sweet raisin sultanas, the orange peel zestiness, the almond nuttiness from the marzipan that goes on below the icing, and the sweetness from the icing. Then you get this delicate cigar smoke note at the end. You still have on the taste dark chocolate and treacle toffee notes as well. It’s long. It’s lingering. It stays there for a long, long time as more figs and dates notes shine through with a hint of smoke. It's quite unique in its own right.

It’s going to be bottled at cask strength as well, directly from the warehouse. We’re going to be bottling it straight from the cask. It's incredible.



Glen Grant is unique because it became unique back in 1873 when the young Major took over the distillery after his father died. His father was James Grant — he was the last brother to die, and he handed over the distillery to James, his son, at 25 years of age. He owned the distillery and had trainloads of money, so he didn't really need to worry about money for the rest of his life.

But, he went ahead and doubled the capacity of the distillery because he saw the need for it. History sometimes repeats itself; when I look back at records, in 1973, 100 years later, I doubled the production of Glen Grant and kept the old distillery going at the same time. When the Major did it, he introduced purifiers up into the neck of the still, which have an empty cylinder. The neck of the still, the swan neck, goes down into the condenser at most distilleries. The water goes up through the condenser, and the vapor is then condensed and runs back into the spirit.

James Grant Major wanted to keep his single malt Glen Grant uniquely different from everyone else's, so he put a purifier between the neck and the condenser. So instead, in the swan neck, the vapor comes midway up to the purifier. We run cold water over the head to keep it a cool head. As the hot vapor goes up, it hits the cold head. The heavier vapors reflux back into the still, and the light ones go over to be condensed in a condenser. What he did is he made this light, fruity whisky a much more fruity spirit. At the time, there were no laboratories to check this out for him. He was just going on his own experience of nosing the new spirit and tasting it and saying, “Well that's good enough.” Maybe, on the other hand, he had so much money he didn't really care if it were good or bad. They wouldn't know until ten years later! But, it was the finest thing he did. To this day, we still use purifiers on both stills.

Tradition and innovation are the two words I use to describe The Glen Grant. I mentioned earlier that cleanliness is next to godliness. I also say consistent quality is the name of the game. The spirit, the casks, and single malt that we are using just now was laid down by many people before me. They made sure it was the best single malt they could make. If I keep that quality consistent, which it has been for 60 years, future generations are going to enjoy that. And then they can judge me by that. A distiller is like a gardener. If a gardener plants a new tree, he never, ever sees that tree grow to its full potential. He's planting that tree for future generations to enjoy. So hopefully, future generations will discover and enjoy the quality of Glen Grant single malts.



If you know the history of Glen Grant, James Grant, the founder, was the Provost of Elgin, the biggest city near to us. He founded the steam railways in 1852. He saved Speyside with a rail link, which took all the distilleries products down south to the bottling halls. One of the most striking things he did in 1861, 100 years before I started, was he generated electricity and lit the distillery, his mansion house, and one light for the village. He was way ahead of his time.

Right now, having a power grid built with green electricity is becoming the next standard, but he was doing it then because he used the wastewater from the condensers. The wastewater went through a water turbine, and it would fill a room about 10 feet square. My one regret is that I threw it out in 1983 when I doubled the distillery because I needed room for more stills. I wish that I had kept it because it would have been a fantastic thing to have — a lighthouse with water going through it generating electricity. But, there you go, you are bound to make mistakes in your life.



I think that my life has been; well, I have been a one-horse jockey as a distiller. I believe I've maybe managed to create and delegate responsibility to the younger ones on-site — like my assistant was doing an apprenticeship in the distillery. He became like me because he would never come to me with a problem unless he was completely stuck.

For example, he might come into the office and say, “Oh, Dennis, this is happening.” And I would say, “Well, have you tried this?” “Yes.” And then he would say, “I've tried this. I’ve tried that. And I've tried that.” He was inside my head, you know. That's fantastically reassuring to me that The Glen Grant is in good hands for the next 60 years, you know.