Nov. 6: Holyrood's Distillery & Operations Manager Marc Watson...

Fellow Drammers!

Mark your calendars (or perhaps we should say “Marc your calendars” ha, for Sunday, November 6th! Holyrood Distillery has brought whisky distilling back to Edinburgh, and we’re excited to get an early first look at what they’re up to. In the past, if you’ve ever flown into Edinburgh and looked into visiting a distillery, there wasn’t always a lot of options — a lot of the most famous distilleries are pretty far North up in Speyside and the Highlands, or down south in Campbeltown or Islay. We’re starting to see a resurgence of distilleries in the lowlands area (where Edinburgh is located), and we were particularly excited to learn of this distillery built right in the heart of Edinburgh. We’ve visited the distillery bar and tasting room a few times now, and they’re doing some really fun stuff. Their attitude is innovation — as they say on their website, they have a team of fairly young distillers, and so they reason that “With no tradition or history that dictates how they have to behave when making whisky, our young distillery team can approach everyday in a new way, and what they make changes all the time.” They have not yet released their first whisky — of course, to be called “whisky” in Scotland, the distillate has to be aged 3 years, and since they started distilling in 2019, we have to assume they’re getting close. But they have released a series of new make bottlings to give a hint of what they’re up to — we’ll be tasting 5 of them in fact, which play around with different malt varieties and different yeast strains, plus a bottle of their gin. None of these are available in the United States yet, but we picked them up at the distillery and with some help from fellow Drammer Shvonne Hasan (thanks Shvonne!), we’ve got them in hand for this tasting (please note we’ve only got 500 ml bottles to work with, which will affect how many sets we can offer).

Specifically here’s what we’ll be trying as part of this tasting:

• Holyrood New Make - Brewer’s x Distiller’s Yeast. This one features 100% Pot Still Distiller’s Malt, and combines two yeast strains: distiller’s year M Strain and Brewer’s Yeast US05. Fermentation time 111.5 hours 60% abv. The idea is to play tribute to Edinburgh’s rich brewing history.

• Holyrood New Make - Crystal Malt. Here they’ve blended two malts - 90% is Pot Still Distiller’s Malt (like the previous one) but here they add in 10% crystal malt. The yeast is all Distiller’s Yeast M strain. Fermentation time 117.6 hours, bottled at 60% abv. The bottle notes the recipe was inspired by an old local ale.

• Holyrood New Make - Chocolate Malt. For their third variation they again use 90% Pot Still Distiller’s Malt, but this time swap in 10% chocolate malt (heavily roasted barley), and use a blend of both Distiller’s M Strain yeast with Edinburgh Ale Yeast. Shorter fermentation time here of only 71 hours.

• Holyrood New Make - Made by Edinburgh. Here we see a combination of the 2nd and 3rd variations. So they use 90% Pot Still Distiller’s Malt, 7.5% crystal malt and 2.5% chocolate malt, and the same two yeast strains as the Chocolate Malt edition. Again 71 hours fermentation,

• Holyrood New Make - Japanese Sake Yeast. This one is particularly interesting. 48% East Lothian Barley, 40 chocolate malt, 12% amber malt. The yeast is entirely from Whitelabs Sake Yeast No. 7. Fermentation time of 108 hours, and they use peated feints! The bottle notes that they were inspired by Masataka Taketsuru’s comparisons between sake and whisky production in his book “On the Production Methods of Pot Still Whisky”. Apparently this yeast is known for a strawberry flavor note. Bottled at 60% abv.

• Height of Arrows Gin. Finally, we’ll taste one of the gins they’ve been producing, here their Height of Arrows variation. It incorporates juniper, beeswax and sea salt. 43% abv.

That’s what we’ll be tasting! And to guide us through the tasting will be their Distillery and Operations Manager Marc Watson, joining us over Zoom. Marc worked for a range of breweries and distilleries, most recently overseeing the creation of both new John Crabbie & Co Distilleries in Leith before joining the team to build Holyrood. Very much looking forward to learning about what Marc and the team have planned for the future when they start releasing actual aged whiskies!

We hope you can join us!

• WHEN: Sunday, November, 6th at Noon Pacific / 3pm EST / 20:00 in Scotland

• FORMAT: Online Tasting

• PRICE: $25 for Members / $35 for Observers

• ZOOM LINK: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85458966576?pwd=alhTWnRlVkZEa24xdnJIUjFWZ2ErZz09

  • Meeting ID: 854 5896 6576

  • Passcode: 110622