The Balvenie
A Speyside maison whose patience has shaped my own sense of restraint. The five rare crafts at Dufftown, and my 2022 chapter with the house at Shin'Labo.
Of all the houses I have worked alongside, The Balvenie has a particular place. Mortlach is Speyside at its meatiest. The Macallan is Speyside built on sherry casks. Glenmorangie is the Highland counterpoint, and Louis XIII is patience in a decanter. The Balvenie is Speyside done slowly, by hand: the five rare crafts the maison still keeps at Dufftown, where it has distilled since 1893. Whenever I have come across them, I have recognised something of my own work.
I have admired The Balvenie for longer than anything in print shows. When I think about what restraint asks of me, this William Grant & Sons house is the one I measure myself against most often: how the hands move when nobody is watching. In 2022 the maison and I met in public at Shin’Labo, through the Makers Project and a food pairing programme.
The Balvenie was built in 1892 at Dufftown, Banffshire, beside the Glenfiddich distillery, and first distilled in 1893. It belongs to William Grant & Sons, the company William Grant founded in 1887 and still owned and run by the Grant family. That matters to me. A family house is a different thing from the corporate portfolios that own The Macallan (Edrington), Mortlach (Diageo) or Glenmorangie (LVMH/MHD).
The maison calls them the five rare crafts, and they are why I have measured myself against this house for so long.
| The craft | What it means at The Balvenie |
|---|---|
| Home-grown barley | The only distillery in the Scottish Highlands that still grows and malts a proportion of its own barley |
| Floor maltings | A working floor maltings, one of only a handful left in Scotland, where maltmen turn the barley by hand |
| Cooperage | Its own coopers, who repair, char and prepare the casks at the bench |
| Coppersmith | A coppersmith who looks after the stills that give the spirit its character |
| The Malt Master | The palate that selects and marries each expression |
Almost everywhere else in Scotch, scale or modernisation has pushed these crafts out. The Balvenie has kept them, and keeping hold of what makes the work what it is, is the discipline I try to keep with my own hands.
David C. Stewart MBE joined The Balvenie in 1962 and became Malt Master in 1974. He is credited with pioneering cask finishing, and he kept the standard at his bench for sixty-one years before standing down in 2023 to become the maison’s Honorary Ambassador. Kelsey McKechnie, who trained under him, succeeded him as Malt Master. My work with the house fell within his tenure, and the standard I measured myself against was his.
The Makers Project is The Balvenie’s way of honouring craft beyond its own walls. In 2022 it came to Shin’Labo, and I took part as a maker. With an artist, I painted a mural of the house’s crafts: the barley, the casks and the copper still.
The pairing programme brought the maison and my cooking to one table at Shin’Labo by James Won, at Mitsui Shopping Park LaLaport, Bukit Bintang City Centre, in April and May 2022. Each course was matched to a Balvenie expression, with the spirit at the centre of the plate. What gave the evenings their weight was the discipline of the pairing, more than the rarity of the pour.
Shin’Labo had opened that February, and The Macallan Dining Experience had begun that month, so The Balvenie was the second spirits house the room welcomed. Five outlets covered the programme, in English and Chinese: Goody25, Kings Sleeve, Moretify, Gentscode Magazine and Pin Prestige. Gentscode’s headline, An Exquisite Evening with The Balvenie, became its title of record.
Mortlach and The Balvenie are both Dufftown distilleries, and they stand at opposite ends of what Speyside can do.
Mortlach is the Beast of Dufftown. Its 2.81-times distillation gives it a meatiness that the Mortlach Room at MeatMore, from August 2023, was built to honour. It is dense, structural and dark. The Balvenie is the patient one: barley grown at home, floor maltings still in use, and the Malt Master’s palate as the instrument. It glows from within where Mortlach weighs from below.
I keep them as a pair and never blur them into one. My spirits work has needed both the structural and the patient, and Dufftown gave me the two in one town.
The five rare crafts are The Balvenie’s, kept by their hands in Dufftown. My part was one year at one Kuala Lumpur room, and I keep it in proportion. What I practise and what The Balvenie practises are different crafts held to the same standard. The patient hand is what I have looked for in this maison, and what I try to bring to my own work.
What David C. Stewart MBE practised at The Balvenie for sixty-one years is what I have tried to practise since I began.
James Won
Selected Press
Full archive →- Gentscode Magazine An Exquisite Evening with The Balvenie — Chef James Won Lead frame for the Shin'Labo programme 28 April 2022
- Kings Sleeve The Balvenie × Shin'Labo 27 April 2022
- Moretify Balvenie × Shin'Labo feature Chinese-press coverage 27 April 2022 ZH-CN
- Goody25 Balvenie × Shin'Labo feature Earliest dated coverage of the programme 13 April 2022
- PIN Prestige Malaysia PinPalate: The Balvenie × Shin'Labo food pairing Balvenie × Shin'Labo Food Pairing programme record 30 April 2022
Read next
Spirits, Champagne, Cognac
MortlachThe other Speyside maison of Dufftown, same town and a different temperament
The MacallanSpeyside, Edrington and the sherry cask
GlenmorangieHighland, LVMH/MHD, Whisky for Dinner, August 2014
KrugChampagne: Ambassade Chef, 2014 onward
Shin'LaboThe room that hosted the Balvenie programme
Some partnerships get written about. Others are about being recognised. The Balvenie is one of the second kind.