Esteemed whisky writer Tom Bruce-Gardyne sits down with Wemyss Malts Production Director, Isabella Wemyss, to find out more about her background and how it's made her into the skilled whisky blender that she is today.
Behind every great whisky, there is a master blender who put the whole thing together. With the sole exception of single cask whiskies, everything is about the blend, and that is true of single malts as much as blended Scotch. It is down to assembling the right casks at the right age to create something that is hopefully greater than the sum of its parts.
Getting it right is a real art – a painstaking process of trial and error that goes on behind the scenes. Luckily, this is where Isabella Wemyss is happiest blending whisky for Wemyss Malts having previously worked in the tea trade. That dual career makes her pretty well unique in the world of whisky, as does the fact she works directly with her brother William Wemyss who founded the company.
It is a strong if well delineated double-act. “He’s the one with the vision and the entrepreneurial drive,” she says. “I’m much better at the technical side – the side that has always interested me in tea and whisky. We’ve got completely different skillsets, so we’re never competing to do the same job. I would say that I’m responsible for what’s in the bottle, and my brother and the marketing department are responsible for what’s on the bottle.”
The tea connection puts her in good company if you think of Johnnie Walker and Chivas Regal. It was through creating consistent, well-balanced blends of tea, that the young John Walker learnt how to blend what became the world’s best-selling whisky at his grocery store in Kilmarnock. Whether he quite started in 1820, it all began with tea, as it did with the Chivas Brothers in Aberdeen later in the century.
Isabella ran the family’s tea estate in the Highlands of Kenya, where she learnt the business from the roots up before joining Tetley’s as a trainee tea buyer. She now uses the same skills every day at Wemyss Malts, and says, whether it’s tea samples from Sri Lanka or China, or whisky casks from Islay or Speyside, “you’re always thinking about where will that fit in? How will it respond to the other elements, and what will it add to the blend?”
But aside from blending, Isabella also looks after maturation which plays such a crucial role in shaping the character of a whisky. On joining Wemyss Malts she spent three years studying for her IBD Diploma in brewing and distilling to gain some real technical expertise. “I buy all the casks and all the spirit, as I really want to be sure of the quality of the wood,” she says. With the casks filled with fresh spirit, she has full control over the entire ageing process.
When each cask is ready for bottling, she begins thinking of the blend. “It’s a bit like having a paint box with all the variety of different spirits, and different wood styles, and you mix them on your palette,” she says. “We’re looking for particular colours to go into the painting.” Like any art, there is an element of alchemy that’s hard to put into words. But whatever it is Isabella clearly has it. All that experience in tea, all that knowledge of whisky and wood is there in every drop of Wemyss Malts.
Love to try a bottle one day