A long time ago, when you had all these most houses, you had all of the barley that they would spread out over the malting floors. Mains: Our name is a nod back to old tradition. ![]() TWW: What does the actual name Monkey Shoulder reference? They also have a lower amount of sulfur, which gives us those great fruity notes and that lightness that has become very recognizable in Speyside malts. Mains: All of our Speyside distilleries are using ex-bourbon casks. TWW: Why the emphasis on Speyside distilleries? That’s being continuously married into a larger tun after we’ve married those small batches, and then from that tun, where we’re marrying those batches, is where we bottle from.Īnd the reason we do it this way is because, as we’ve grown in size, we want to make sure that we never change or veer off from that exact flavor profile that we had in Batch 27. After we know our taste panel tastes those barrels to make sure that we’ve hit the exact notes that we’re looking for, we then marry that into a larger marrying tun. Brian selects three different barrels from those Speyside distilleries and blends that in a small batch. And so, to keep up with the demand, because it is so popular, we have expanded now to where we sometimes use not necessarily just those three distilleries – it’s not the same exact thing that it’s a barrel from each – but it is just Speyside malt that we are blending, just to make sure that we hit that same exact flavor profile that we have in Batch 27. I know here in the United States that during the last five years it’s been, among bartenders, the number one trending Scotch, the best selling ssotch in your top tier bars. Monkey Shoulder, when it came out, grew in popularity, I think, quicker than anybody expected it to. ![]() And that is the batch that we hold our flavor profile to, that every single bottle now that is produced is made to taste exactly like. So that was what originally, when they tasted through all these different barrels from those three original distilleries.Īnd that became, if you look on every bottle of Monkey Shoulder, Batch 27. And then that vanilla that is so approachable and, I think, comforting and fun for people to enjoy. So he was looking for barrels that had the flavor notes of the fruity malts, the oranges, the gingers, some of that spice that you get, the great cinnamon notes. Brian Kinsman, our master blender, was looking specifically for certain flavor notes that would also be able to work while in mixing, and would probably attract a lot of the bourbon drinkers that had become so popular at the time. Mains: When Monkey Shoulder first came out, it was a blend of three different Speyside Scotches, which was our Glenfiddich, our Balvenie, and then our Kininvie. Can you talk about the blend mix, what distilleries it’s from, and how do each of those distilleries’ malts influence the final product? ![]() TWW: So Monkey Shoulder, owned by William Grant and Sons, is a blended malt. So this is all encapsulated in the personality of Monkey Shoulder. Obviously you like for it to taste good, but so much of it is more of an escape, and it’s fun, it’s a community, it’s this playfulness that I think that everybody enjoys and that’s part of why we enjoy going out to bars. Let’s completely challenge the conventions that everybody usually thinks of when they think of Scotch, and let’s kind of transcend this category. So we know that we’re going to give people great quality and great flavor, but we’re going to do it in a way that doesn’t have any pretension to it. We said, “what if we made a Scotch that’s super approachable, and that is made with the idea of mixing in cocktails behind it?” So let’s make it with really high quality liquid, and we’re going to do it with a hundred percent malt and no grain whiskey. And Scotch has always predominantly been a spirit that you think of, if you went back 10 or 15 years, where people would say, “You’re going to put Scotch in a cocktail?” They might reach across the bar and slap you.īut considering that Scotch is made upon highlighting different flavors and key characteristics from each barrel, and that blending those barrels to make something that is beautiful and enjoyable is almost is the same thing that we do with cocktails, it made sense for us to play in that space. So keeping true to what our passion and kind of knowledge is, we started to see a rise in bourbon, at the time, and a lot of bartenders moving to mixing cocktails with it, and having fun while mixing cocktails.
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