Asides

GOLDEN PROMISE BARLEY

Now here’s an incredible random musing related to whisky. It turns out that Karuizawa 1971 is distilled using imported “Golden Promise” barley. And then it turns out that such barley is relatively famous!  Indeed, it was used by Benromach in their Benromach Origins Golden Promise Barley bottling, which is a rare moment in the limelight for the barley behind the bottle! It is also used by the Glengoyne distillery, who favour this barley for its rich, nutty flavour.   Indeed, the Macallan 50 Year Old whisky, one of the most expensive whiskies in the world, was made using only Golden Promise barley.

It appears that most farmers grow different strains of barley, opting for strains which produce greater quantities per acre over whisky distillery preferences for barleys which produce high yields of fermentable sugar and better flavour. Alas, the whisky industry goals are not necessarily aligned with the farmers’ goals - so perhaps some farmers will read this and discuss producing more Golden Barley for distilleries, who knows!

For the anoraks amongst us, and i presume there are some out there given the weather this time of year, Golden Promise is a gamma-ray induced semi-dwarf mutant of the cultivar `Maythorpe’.  It is also worthy of note that there is a scientifically demonstrated isogenic relationship between Maythorpe and Golden Promise barley.  Now, given that the firing of gamma rays at barley to mutate it is hardly the stuff of Mother Nature, one might question whether the resultant whiskies could be deemed to be “organic” - because the purist would argue that the basic organism was genetically modified, even though it may have been organically grown. For our part - we are going to decide right here that whisky made with Golden Promise barley is not “organic whisky”.

There - you learn something every day!

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