6. When Spirit Meets Wood

Can a whisky’s terroir survive maturation? Why is such a large percentage of Waterford Distillery’s budget committed to the purchase and storage of casks? How much of a whisky’s flavour come from its time in a cask? What happens the whisky as it matures?   In this episode of Terroir-Driven: The Waterford Whisky podcast, we’re answering these questions and more as we examine the most time-consuming aspect of whisky making, maturation, in order to best understand how the spirit and wood interact with one another and collectively build upon each previous step of the whisky making process in the pursuit of the most flavourful litre of alcohol ever created.

Om Podcasten

Influenced by the world's greatest winemakers, Waterford Distillery obsessively brings the same intellectual drive, methodology and rigour to single malt whisky. But what does that actually mean? It means applying strict production criteria to Irish barley and whisky production. It means sourcing barley from individual Irish farms - some organic, some biodynamic. It means malting, fermenting, distilling and maturing those farm crops in complete isolation - from field to barrel. The distillery showcases the barley flavours derived from individual Irish farms, terroir by terroir, in its Single Farm Origin series. But the ultimate goal is to one day use these individual terroirs to produce world’s most unique, complex and compelling whisky. In this podcast series, the award-winning whisky communicator Barry Chandler has unfettered access to the distillery and its people, to break down each step of the production process from growing the barley to bottling the whisky so that you, the whisky fan, can understand about where flavour is created and what the possibilities are when a distillery chooses to obsessively explore that prime raw ingredient of single malt whisky: barley.