Gordon Motion, Master Whisky Maker for Highland Park

Of the many astounding whisky brands today, Highland Park has continued as a clear standout producer of Single Malt Scotch. It’s a staple in whisky menus and home bars. No, its grounds are not in the Highlands of Scotland as some newcomers might assume from the name – instead, a plane or ferry ride would need to deliver you to the Orkney Islands, a truly picturesque location and one that has become a type of legend for this over 200-year-old distilling tradition. And at the helm, Highland Park’s Master Whisky Maker, Gordon Motion, has guided the progression of this brand for nearly 25-years. We sat down with Gordon to discover his work, the influence of the Orkney Islands and his vision for this iconic brand.

So, when I came back from that holiday, I investigated how I would get into the Brewing and Distilling course to pursue that path. Then immediately after I graduated, I came back for a postgraduate study in Malting, Brewing and Distilling Science at Heriot-Watt University. I suppose that my ultimate goal was to become a distillery manager someday. I worked my way through small breweries up to regional breweries, and then I moved to our Maltsters producing distilling malt, and I started to get to know some of the distillers. While they're certainly malting 24 hours a day, seven days a week, that's when some realize that you quite like your weekends and your evenings to yourself.

The job for the assistant to the master blender at Edrington came up. At this point, I'd never looked at that side of it before, but I've always dealt in sensory and quality with relation to beer and malted barley. So, I applied for it and was lucky enough to get it. That was in June 1990 when I started as the assistant to the company Master Blender. In those days there was only one master blender in the company, and I studied under him for 10 years until he retired and then I took over as a group master blender. More latterly, as demands on the job have increased, we've split the load – we have a number of Master Whisk(e)y Makers and Master Blenders now in the company dealing with specific whisk(e)y. In the last five years, I have focused solely on Highland Park, although I will still blend everything.

There has been a huge evolution. Back when I joined in 1998, Highland Park had a 12 year old, 18 year old and we had just launched 25 year old. So there were three variants of Highland Park. I mean, I worked with all the other brands as well that our company did. But as the single malt category grew, and the brands grew quite considerably, it went from three versions to, let’s say, 10 to 15 versions, and then you multiply that over the number of distilleries we had as well.

At that point, when I took over as Master Blender, I concentrated on our single malts, which at that time, we had four brands. Now, I put together all the new products for Highland Park – I do the blending. But if I'm off on holiday, one of the other team members here can equally do the blending for me. So we all cover each other's work but I'm certainly the person who's got the finger on the pulse for Highland Park whisky, new product development and maintaining quality of it.

It can be a challenge. Certainly, years ago, it really was a challenge. We've developed so many tools now to help with decision making. Back then, what we couldn't see with any level of detail is if we've got a 15 year old now, could we still make it in 15 years? Do we have enough stock if you want to grow? All we could really look at was do you have enough? Did you distill enough in that year? It didn't necessarily tell you which casks it was in and what quality it was.

We've done so much since then. We've got so much data on quality now and we've built systems in the background that if we decide to develop a new product we can plan effectively. And if it's intended to be a long lasting product that I have to recreate time after time, then we can put that through our systems now and consider if we have enough whisky, don't have enough whisky or have enough but you need a different type of cask or look at moving whisky from one type of cast to another. It was a real many sleepless nights in the early days just not knowing whether I could make the same whiskies next year that I was making this year. Now I can sleep a bit better.

I enjoy the balance of peat and sweet flavors in Highland Park. I'm not a fan of heavily peated whiskies but I do like a little bit of smoke. For me it's just that perfect balance. Also, the distillery itself up in Orkney, when you go up to Orkney and you step off the plane or off the ferry, you just feel your shoulders drop; it's just such a nice, relaxed feeling when you get up to Orkney. There's a thing we call “Orkney time” – it will be done when it's done; it’ll get done, so don't worry about it. I just feel very comfortable in the brand.

I love the flavor of Highland Park; the flavors that develop. There's never a day goes by when you're not surprised by the whisky that comes out one cask or another that you think, “How did that flavor get in there from a cask that's the same as this cask next to it? There is just a huge variety of flavors, and it's good fun being able to pick these things out and go, “Alright, I know that cask and I can use that in some product in the future.”

Orkney Peat. We're one of the few distilleries to still have our own maltings on-site to malt our own barley. We only malt a small proportion of that, but we use peat that's dug up from Hobbister Moor about seven miles from the distillery. If you've ever been to Orkney, it's extremely windy. I mean, Orkney is on the east of the Atlantic, so it gets battered by wind so there are very few trees. This means the peat has been laid down over centuries or millennia. It's made up of little green shrubs; it's got no tree material in it.

So, when you burn that peat, it's a very fragrant smoke – it’s almost like an incense rather than an ashy, iodin-y smoke like you would get from the peat dug up from Islay. I know from experience, having trialed peat from the mainland of Scotland for a short period of time, it gives a completely different character. Orkney peat is absolutely critical to the flavor of Highland Park. This is as close as you are going to get to terroir in a Scotch Whisky – it is actually the taste of the soil from about seven miles from the distillery.

Another major thing is our use of Sherry casks that we have specifically built for us. We choose the wood; we work with the cooperages to build the casks. We work with the bodegas to season them with the wine that we've chosen so that we can really control the quality of the wood that we're putting our whiskies into. And it's that quality of those Sherry casks that allow us to give an entirely natural color to Highland Park. It's all down to choosing the right mix of casks to make each batch while trying to keep it consistent and as natural as possible.

From the day the spirit is distilled, if we're putting new spirit into a cask, we check that new spirit and report back fortnightly to the distillery manager – we'll sit and have a discussion to make sure everything is aligned because potentially you're not going to see that for 10 to 12 years. So, we want to feedback regularly to the distillery managers that the distillery is running as we are hoping to make new spirit. As the whisky gets to 10 years old, we take a sample from every cask to check how it's progressing. In this process, we measure the color, the strength, and we perform a sensory assessment on it to make sure that it's maturing as we'd expected. And then in two years time we start to select these casks for single malt. And throughout, we've got routine analysis that is a little different every day. We will be checking Highland Park new make spirit once a week, and we'll be checking the casks weekly over the period of a year just to ensure consistency.

When it comes to actually putting the whiskies together, I'm presented with maybe over a hundred casks for 12 year old. Again at this stage, we check them all on the nose to make sure they are solid, separate them into their cask type, the cask size, the age of the whisky and then it's really sort of that point when you stand back and look at all the casks samples you've got in front you and say, “right, where do I start?” Are the whiskies all really dark; do I have to start at the light end and work my way up to try and get my color and character? Are there a lot of light whiskies so I have to start at the dark end and blend the lighter whisky isn't until I get bring down? It's just different with every batch.

While we have a recipe of sorts that we follow; the recipe is what age, what cask type, and how much of each – that's what will be presented to me but that's not necessarily what will go into the final batch if I'm trying to create something consistent. It really is something but over the course of the year, you're probably going to level out towards that recipe.

For someone new, I would start with our 12 Year Old. I make it a point of saying that I know Highland Park is peated, and the word “peated whisky” can put some people off because they just have this notion that it tastes of iodine and smoke. And although Highland Park is peated, it is very, very lightly peated, so it has a light spiciness to it. The 12 Year Old is just a lovely sweetness as soon as you taste it, and then you get that slightly smoky character coming through in the end.

In terms of the more experienced whisky tasting audience, I would point to our Cask Strength Series – we’ve just launched our 5th Release. When we first did this, it was going to be quite a step for Highland Park; it was potentially going to be a fairly intense flavor given the strength that was going out at. I know that sometimes if you use, for example, European oak sherry casks, they can deliver quite a tannic note, and at cask strength that can be quite overpowering. So my first release of that was, “well, let's try and make it as sweet as possible if we're going to increase the strength and the intensity.” It really majored on American Oak Sherry casks, which delivered a creamy vanilla character.

But the thing about the Cask Strength Series is each batch is unique. It gives me complete freedom to say, “well, what parcel of casks have we got that we can deliver a slightly different flavor?” I think it's probably true to say that the Cask Strength has exceeded all our expectations – it sold out rapidly when we first launched. This gave me a little bit of confidence to be a little bit more dealing in the flavor profile now. If you want to investigate a whisky with nothing taken out, go for this Cask Strength Series. And then you can choose what strength you want to drink it; by adding water or ice to it, or however you want to enjoy it.

The ReserveBar Single Cask, #4505 is a refill Hogshead, so that's had whisky in it before. We've filled that again, but from the color and the character of that, it would have been a European First Fill Sherry Hogshead. The Single Cask Series that we've done is something special. I'm going through thousands of samples a year to look at the quality of them. As I mentioned early, you get to some casks and you just think, “wow, what a character that's coming out of that.” For example, I remember there was one that was really light in color, when you're normally gaining color, so you know it’s a refill cask where the next time that's emptied, we'll probably get rid of it. But there was one of them that just smelt like roses; it smelled like Turkish Delight. It was just something that was so unusual.

I'm always looking for exceptional or unusual flavors in all of these. Something that is not even 1%; it's a fraction of a percent of the casks that we fill on a yearly basis that we discover have a character that is stunning and worthy of going out as a single cask. And we do this just to give people that chance to see some of the things I get coming through. It's not just a case of me having to select a hundred casks to go out – I'll select as many as I find, and they'll be there available, should they want to be released. If they don't get released, then they may go into an 18, 21 or 25 Year Old, but at least, we've identified them to say that these ones are worthy of going out as a single cask for some unique character that they give. The ReserveBar exclusive Single Cask #4505 was just an exceptional refill cask: Black Treacle, Brazil nuts. It was very tannic driven, so it had aniseed notes as well.