Pay a visit to Japan’s Yamazaki Distillery, and you’ll spot a statue of Shinjiro Torii standing proudly for all to see. And again, at Suntory’s white-spirits plant in Osaka, Torii-san can be seen stepping off a plinth, as if into the unknown. He was taking a risk in setting up a single-malt distillery in Japan in the early 1920s, and there were struggles along the way. But boy, did it pay off for ‘the godfather of Japanese whisky’.
Today the success of his spirit – disregarded upon release in his home country – is testament to Torii’s stoic attitude. Persistence (and a passion to get it right) enabled the Suntory business to eventually succeed on its home turf. It took a further 82 years before whisky from the Yamazaki Distillery was launched in the UK, back in 2005. A tough sell? You bet! Selling Scotch in Scotland was hard at that time. But what underpinned the whisky was the story of its original maker.
Yes, Torii-san was employing Scottish methods – and today Scottish barley is still used to make Japanese whisky – but it was his vision to create ‘whiskies that would be acceptable to the Japanese palate’ that gave Japanese whisky an identity, a style that is more delicate than Scotch and one that has ingratiated itself with the world’s whisky drinkers. Even those in Scotland. The grains, the stills, the barrels, the ageing process – yes, they all matter. But it could be argued that the heart of whisky isn’t in the science at all; it’s in the people who make it. Those who founded distilleries and who created what we today call ‘tradition’. Those who, like Torii-san, took a giant leap of faith.
Take Jimmy Russell from Wild Turkey, who has been at it for more than 70 years. Seven decades is a remarkably long time, by anyone’s standards. Jimmy’s hands are the hands that built Wild Turkey’s legacy, and he’s passed that on to his son Eddie and grandson Bruce. When you visit, you can still find Jimmy sitting at the entrance to the visitors’ centre, greeting guests as they make their way around the site. Everyone knows about the limestone water, the warm climate for barrel ageing, and the numerous, legendary distilleries scattered across Kentucky, but talk to someone like Jimmy Russell, and you start to understand that this whole thing isn’t just about geography. It’s personal. It’s Jimmy’s stubborn refusal to compromise and Eddie’s willingness to push boundaries that have made Wild Turkey what it is today. The Russells are the soul of that spirit.
It cements the point that, for me, the best whiskies are made by people who have a deep connection to what they’re doing. For these makers, whisky is not just a job; it is a way of life. They know when to adjust the mash, when to extend the fermentation and when a barrel tastes just right. And it’s intuitive to them not because it is in a manual, but because they’ve lived it. They’ve learned it the hard way.
The first time I went to the whisky isle of Islay, off Scotland’s west coast, I signed up for a warehouse tasting at Lagavulin Distillery. The man hosting the tasting, Iain McArthur, had been working across the island’s distilleries as a warehouse operator (including a stint at the fabled Port Ellen) for just over 30 years. His energy and enthusiasm were infectious; his pride in the job – keeping these age-old distilleries going – was obvious.
Not a founder, nor an owner, but so much more than a simple cog in the machine, McArthur, and similar men and women across Scotland, are the real spirits that have kept the fires burning at these distilleries. Each time I went back to Islay over the past 20 years, Iain ‘Pinky’ McArthur was there, ready to greet me with his trademark cheeky smile and quick-witted remarks. McArthur finally retired at the end of 2023, after 50 years’ service to whisky, and a commemorative bottling of Lagavulin was released in his honour.
The whisky was, of course, filled into cask by McArthur 18 years ago, and these bottles with his name on the label were hand-filled by him: a full-circle moment. Whisky is an art form that requires patience, after all – sometimes generational patience. It might be 20 to 30 years before a cask of whisky is ready to be bottled or blended. The person who started the process might not even be around to taste the final product. It’s a long game, one where people are the custodians of something greater than themselves.
Whisky is an art form that requires patience. It’s a long game, one where people are the custodians of something greater than themselves
And it is this that makes the people so important. It’s not just about making whisky; it’s about preserving a tradition, about handing down knowledge and keeping a craft alive. The place might give the whisky its flavour; the process might give it structure; but it is the people who give it personality. Without them, it’s just another spirit in a bottle.
Club Oenologique’s contributing editor (spirits) and columnist Joel Harrison is a spirits writer, judge and broadcaster, as well as a Keeper of the Quaich, Musketeer of Armagnac and Gin Guild ‘rectifier’.
