Samples laid out … blend your own whiksy!
A dozen B.C. distillers got a masterclass in the art of whisky making and blending recently from former Macallan whisky maker, Dhavall Gandhi. Gandhi, a colleague of Odd Society Spirits distiller Gordon Glanz from their Heriot-Watt student days, was invited to give a talk on his philosophy of blending. Odd Society has since created a blend based on his ideas.
In a one-day masterclass, Gandhi led a group of distillers—from Vancouver Island, B.C.’s interior and the Lower Mainland region—through details of whisky making at The Lakes, a new Scotch distillery with innovative production processes (such as the use of both stainless steel and copper condensors), where he is currently the whisky maker.
The former whisky maker for The Macallan also led a blending workshop, in which distillers were invited to bring their own spirit samples for professional feedback, potential advice and free-wheeling blending experiments with Gandhi and their colleagues. Because of the need to release mature Canadian whisky to market, small distilleries often rely on single-cask releases. But in the U.K, Gandhi said, “The nerve centre of a distillery is the blending lab... Blending is an area where you can actually stretch, and create, different flavours.”
Gandhi, who had spoken on a panel at the World Whisky Forum in Seattle the previous week, gave local distillers a flavour of what world-class professional development opportunities could look like in Canada, without expensive cross-border travel to U.S. conferences and destinations.
“This is exactly the type of training and collaboration I think we need to see more of in our industry. It’s one of the driving principles behind developing a Canadian-grown conference and trade show—so we can build a stronger community and take time to learn best practices from industry leaders,” says Alex Hamer, founder of Artisan Distillers Canada and the ADC Conference & Trade Show.