Springing Forth

From water source to barley field, spring quietly shapes the character of whisky long before it reaches the cask

- by EUAN DUGUID

THERE is a point in the year when you realise the cold has loosened its grip. As our planet tips on its axis, things begin - almost imperceptibly - to move again.

It happens in the fields first. The barley ground darkens and softens, the furrows no longer holding frost but promise. Then it happens in places you don't see as readily: in warehouses, in casks, in the wood itself.

Spring matters to whisky in ways that don't announce themselves. It isn't a season of drama. There are no launch parties or harvest photographs, no bonfires of peat or roaring stills.

Instead, spring is about release: about expansion after contraction, about patience being quietly rewarded.

All winter, the oak has been holding its breath.

Cold tightens wood. The staves draw in on themselves, pores narrowing, interaction slowing. Spirit still moves - whisky never sleeps entirely - but it does so cautiously, like a walker edging across ice. Then the temperature lifts just enough, and the cask begins to open again.

Distillers will tell you that this is when flavour exchange subtly changes pace. Not dramatically. Not romantically. But measurably.

The oak expands, allowing spirit to push a little deeper into the wood, drawing back compounds that had lain dormant through the colder months: vanillin from American oak, dried fruit richness from European sherry casks, spice, tannin, texture.