Glenfiddich's Top Whisky Master Reveals the Most Important Element of Single Malt Success

On an unusually balmy day in Scotland's Speyside region, the sun shone brightly down on the warehouses and trademark pagodas that dot the grounds of the Glenfiddich distillery. Scotland is famous for being misty, gloomy, and chilly—in the most wonderful and atmospheric way. But there wasn't a cloud in the sky or a drop of rain in sight. 

It might not have seemed like Scotch-sipping weather. But after touring the distillery grounds, I visited one of the oldest warehouses onsite, where Glenfiddich malt master Brian Kinsman shared tastes of whisky directly from the cask. 

Of the more than 150 distilleries in Scotland, Glenfiddich is one of the largest and most popular. The distillery is owned by the family-run company William Grant & Sons, which also owns The Balvenie, Hendrick’s Gin, Reyka Vodka, and blended whisky brands like Grant’s and Monkey Shoulder. Glenfiddich dwarfs all of them in terms of size and scale. The brand's extremely popular core lineup includes single malts aged from 12 to 18 years, experimental releases like Fire & Cane, and much older whiskies finished in various casks as part of its Grand Series.

Kinsman and I retreated to a quiet corner to talk more about the Glenfiddich DNA after the tour. He’s a quiet presence, but clearly an expert in all things whisky—as one might expect after more than two decades in the industry, partly under the tutelage of legendary, now-retired malt master David Stewart MBE of The Balvenie fame. 

Kinsman has been with William Grant & Sons since 1997, but even this far on in his career, he feels the drive to experiment: "You have to push boundaries and try to be a bit innovative, and just see where it goes," he says. "I see my role as constantly being the agitator, to think long term.”

Here's what else Kinsman had to say about the "conscience" of single malt production, stewarding a "living whisky," and the delicate balancing act of melding innovation with proud tradition at the world's biggest Scotch brand. 

Men's Journal: How did you get the title of malt master? What does that actually mean?

Brian Kinsman: I think it originally was a William Grant title, because my business title is master blender. The words “blending” and “single malt” can be confusing, so malt master is the single malt version of a master blender, and it's to make it abundantly clear that we are not blending.

Simply put, my role is to make sure that every drop that goes into the bottle is exactly how we want it to be. The final sign off of, “Is this right and are we happy to send it to market?” is my call.

How would you describe the core defining character of Glenfiddich?

It’s a constant equilibrium of fruit and oak notes. The intensity of both gradually increases as you go through the age statements—starting out with that light, delicate, surprisingly flavorsome new spirit, which doesn't have big, heavy notes. 

The analogy I always use is with cooking. If you're making a sauce, as you reduce that sauce you intuitively know it gets deeper, richer, more intense. Making whisky is like that—except it takes 30 years instead of 30 minutes. So, it's taking that process of gradually concentrating flavor and controlling how it happens over decades.

How do you mature Glenfiddich?

The biggest building block we have is what I call refill wood, or wood that's been in our system for 10, 20 years. It could be American oak or European oak, but fundamentally, it provides a delicate, light touch, and the Glenfiddich character is massive in it. 

Then, you have ex-bourbon barrels. Ex-bourbon tends to have big vanilla, toffee, and sweet notes—really forward with that vanilla note. Then you have European sherry oak, where you get a dark, ruby character, almost struggling to tell what distillery it comes from because it's so powerful in the cask. 

Simply put, that's how you make Glenfiddich 12, 18, and 30. The refill cask on its own is great, but it's a bit thin. The ex-bourbon cask on its own is great, but it’s too one-dimensional vanilla. And the sherry cask doesn't represent Glenfiddich because it's so intense. The marriage is better than each of the individual parts.

How do you select the barrels that go into a batch of Glenfiddich?

I’m part of a team of three whisky blenders. We select all the casks and say exactly which cask we want to go into every batch. We also do some random sampling to check that everything's fine. 

Then, there's a sensory panel here at the distillery. They get a sample immediately after it's been dumped and the batch has been made. The laboratory here at the distillery does the initial checks. 

The blends get the same treatment. The thing you're scared of is drift. It's very easy to slowly drift away from what you think is perfect, so you've always got to try and bring yourself back.

The solera vat is a vital part of maintaining Glenfiddich's true character. How does it work? 

We first filled the solera vat in 1998, and it's never been emptied. So that vat has been constantly operating for 26 years. The original premise was to create a living whisky, to create that consistency batch to batch where 50 percent of what was in the bottle came from the previous batch. 

Today, the 15-year-old whisky we bottle contains a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny amount of the batch that was first put in 1998. You can't really get a more consistent way to make a product than just constantly building on the one from before. And we've expanded out across a whole lot of different products now.

Do consumers get that blending—despite its connotation—is part of single malt production, as far as selecting casks?

Your average consumer doesn't. I'm sometimes surprised at how much even somebody who's into whisky doesn't really know about what goes on. I think the concept of blending different casks together is not well known at a consumer level. 

Proper whisky enthusiasts get it, but everybody else is oblivious. I don't think consumers make the jump from realizing that a bottle of whisky came from potentially 100 to 200 barrels in a batch that were selected by a malt master.

How do you balance consistency with experimentation while staying true to the brand?

You have to wear two hats. This distillery is 140 years old and the single malt has been around since the ‘60s, so it’s our responsibility to maintain that. Don’t compromise quality. Keep everything right. Fill the warehouse with casks that we know will produce 12-, 18-, and 30-year-old whisky with no risk. 

If you do that right, you earn the freedom to do the other stuff—the fun bits of just trying something. You might get something unusual, do a slightly different distillation one day on the experimental stills just to see what happens. You get the freedom to play around with a distillery this size, but you need to earn the right by maintaining the core.

Is there a limit to what you can do with cask finishes, or more room to explore? 

Every time I think we're finished, something else comes along. There's people making spirits, using casks, and doing unusual things in lots of places. There’s little nuances, like a winemaker doing something unusual, which we can piggyback on to try and see if that cask works for us. So there's definitely more to come. 

We did a Tabasco barrel finish, and I was genuinely interested in it. It wasn’t Glenfiddich, it was a blend—and It doesn't taste like Scotch at all, but I absolutely love it. It just makes you smile.

The Scotch Whisky Association's guidelines have recently expanded. How would you say they've changed? 

They were expanded, but more importantly, clarified. It wasn't really that they opened up a whole lot of new stuff. They just made it really clear: Prove this barrel came from a traditional source; prove that you're doing traditional maturation with it; and prove that it still maintains the traditional characteristics of Scotch. If you do all of that, then you're home and dried. 

The brand ambassadors are all over the world seeing things and tasting things. We've got a great network of people feeding stuff in, and the next thing will come along eventually.

How do you ensure that future generations at the distillery will have quality whisky?

Don't compromise, and be the conscience of the distillery. It would be dead easy for an accountant somewhere to strip out a bit of money and say, “Let's not do that. Let's not use wooden wash backs. We'll go stainless steel because they're cheaper. Let's stop the marrying process because it's just a pain.” 

But I see my role as constantly being the agitator for, “No, keep it.” Think long term. We're filling warehouses full of whisky that people will bottle in 30 or 40 years, so we need to be confident that they are not going to be disappointed by us. It's very much about handing it onto the next generation.

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