Rethinking the regions

“Technically we are a ‘Lowland’, but we will scream ‘Fife’!” declared Ian Palmer when I asked about his plans for InchDairnie whisky in 2019. Seven years on, he remains as proud of his adopted homeland as ever, and he would like it to be recognised as an official whisky region by the Scotch Whisky Association (SWA).

The traditional cohort of five – the Lowlands, Highlands, Islay, Speyside and Campbeltown were, in his view an “historic concept that got baked into the legislation, and there is no appetite to revisit the legislation”. Despite this, he continues to lobby the SWA, but says “that doesn’t mean I’ll get anywhere”.

“I like to throw a challenge to people. Here’s a blank map of Scotland and here’s a pencil. Now draw a line around Speyside. There’s no chance of that happening,” he says, while explaining that “Fife has water on three sides of it, so it’s actually very clearly geographically defined.”

More to the point when it comes to whisky, the Kingdom of Fife has a cluster of five, fairly new distilleries including Daft Mill, Kingsbarns, Lindores Abbey and Eden Mill, that have something of a shared ethos, being relatively small and artisan. Whether one can talk of a shared flavour profile is another matter, and therein lies the problem with regionality.

“I think the regions were very useful in terms of promoting the product, and giving an understanding that there are different areas,” says Ian. “But over time, the apparent flavour distinctions between one region and another either weren’t there in the first place, or have simply faded out.”

TAX, NOT STYLE

It was in 1988 that Diageo’s predecessor UDV launched its six Classic Malts, displayed on a wooden plinth and based on the five regions with a bonus Talisker from Skye thrown in. Punters were invited to start their tour in the Lowlands with a delicate dram of Glenkinchie and progress until finally reaching Islay and the rugged, phenolic power of Lagavulin. The plinth and a hefty stash of whisky books brought the whole idea of regional styles into the mainstream.

Islay may still be a self-contained island of mainly smoky whiskies, with apologies to unpeated Bunnahabhain, but the Highlands is a vast expanse of disparate malts. And that’s before you add in the rest of the Hebrides and Orkney and Shetland that are part of the Highlands as defined by the Scotch Whisky Regulations of 2009. Glengoyne in the Campsie Fells, north of Glasgow is as far apart in flavour as it is in distance from Dalmore on the Cromarty Firth.

Besides, as John Fordyce of the Borders Distillery in Hawick points out “if you look at Highland and Lowland, those distinctions are actually a function of 18th-century tax policy. It was down to the 1794 Wash Act. It was never about style.”  

And yet, the Highland line soon split the country in far more than just tax. To the north, a once dangerous, twilight zone was romanticised by Sir Walter Scott and embraced by the Victorians who soaked up the misty lochs, heather and tartan along with the drink. This cultural bond drove the first great whisky boom just as much as the crisis in Cognac, whose vineyards were being ravaged by that sap-sucking aphid – phylloxera.

MISSING A TRICK

The five whisky regions “were already well known by the time of the Royal Commission report of 1909/11, but it took until 2009 to define them in UK legislation,” says Alan Park, the SWA’s director of legal affairs. “The main reason for including them in the regulations was to protect them from misuse around the world.” Attempted rip-offs have included a Cypriot ‘Highland Supreme’ blend and an ‘Islay Rye’ from Michigan.

Alan is quick to stress that distillers can put their provenance on a label provided all the whisky was distilled there, such that ‘Fife Single Grain Scotch Whisky’ or ‘Orkney Blended Malt Whisky’ are perfectly legal. Whereas ‘Island’s’ whisky would not be allowed because it’s not a specific Scottish place.

Whether there has ever been a ‘Lowlands’ look-alike from overseas seems unlikely. Does the region still have a stigma in terms of whisky? “Oh yes, for sure,” replies John Fordyce. “Simply in marketing the word high is more attractive than low. It’s like which would you rather be – tall or short? It’s just the way people react to certain words.”

Rosebank, rescued and rebuilt by Ian Macleod Distillers after 30 years lying derelict, was once dubbed ‘the king of the Lowlands’. But Macleod’s MD Leonard Russell remembers how the industry could be condescending about the region’s whiskies and would occasionally refer to them as ‘a Lady’s malt’. Even the SWA website described them as ‘feminine’ until a few years ago, according to John Fordyce.

Like the distillers in Fife, he lobbied hard for a new whisky region for the Borders, but his stance has since softened. “We can’t just do what I used to do and thump the table and say ‘it’s not fair’. It’s more nuanced than maybe I thought a decade ago,” he says. “My own personal view is that we are slightly missing a trick. We want to be more precise because consumers value people and provenance as a way of talking about product.”

He believes regions do still matter, and says: “You only have to walk into World Duty Free to see that’s the case, for that’s how they divide up the products on offer. Clearly from a retailer’s perspective this has resonance for the consumers, which I think is important to recognise.”

While Fife could fill a shelf in a whisky shop or bar, the Borders has some way to go, although there are new distilleries planned or being built in the region such as Mossburn in Jedburgh and Grahamslaw in Kelso.

COMPLIMENTS TO THE KINGDOM

Maybe one day it will have its own annual gathering like the Fife Whisky Festival, which began as a one-day affair in 2018. It has since grown to three days and attracts whisky lovers from all over the world, although “about 75 per cent of the people are locals,” says the festival’s co-director, Justine Hazlehurst. “Fifers are very proud individuals in their kingdom.”

This year’s event started on 28 February and tickets went on sale in September. “We were a little bit worried because everyone was talking about the downturn in demand for Scotch whisky, but the tickets sold out in nine minutes. That’s a record,” she says.

Justine was quoted, not entirely accurately, in a lengthy article in the Courier in November 2024 by Kirsten Johnson who wrote: “Becoming a Scotch Whisky Region could bring millions to the Fife economy from tourism and whisky sales and also protect the Fife whisky brand from overseas counterfeiters trying to trade on the name.”

It sounds like Kirsten was getting a little over-excited. Before any boom in tourism, the county’s infrastructure, its transport links and places to stay could do with a serious upgrade. And, no offence to Fife, but those bottling counterfeit booze in countries like China may not have heard of it. Then again, if the legal eagles of the SWA ever stumbled on a stash of such bottles, it would be a glorious compliment to the Kingdom of Fife.