In a career spanning more than four decades, master distiller, Billy Leighton, created an approach to life and whiskey that is perfectly in-tune with the times we live in, writes Gary Quinn
Billy Leighton’s 45 years in blending ensure he’ll never be a collector, he says, but he does admit to having a lot of whiskey in his homeplace in Coleraine in Northern Ireland. “I accumulate,” he explains with a laugh, but like lots of blenders, having spent so much time perfecting a whiskey, the value for him is all about the flavour. He can see the passion among collectors, of course, and understands why they do it but, for him, it’s all sensory. A smile erupts as he reflects on the simple enjoyment of drinking whiskey, the pleasure in experiencing something so straightforward in the glass and yet so complex to create.
For more than four decades he was a team of one, managing a blending portfolio that includes some of the biggest names in the business, including Redbreast, Powers, Midleton VR and Jameson. When this team of one expanded, the new recruits won headlines of their own, such was the prestige of joining the master distiller in the blending room at Irish Distillers. He’s quick to sing the praises of his new team-mates. “They have an enormous amount of experience already,” he says. “We have a wide portfolio to manage and it needs a dedicated team to lead us into the future. Innovation is that future,” he explains, illustrating that It’s at this experimental stage, the point of sensory and laboratory exploration, that the blender thrives.
Global Impact
Leighton is one of a small number of blenders who helped create the trajectory of the modern Irish whiskey industry. He’s had impact at the global level too, putting a spotlight on a series of brands that have turned heads, and opinions, throughout the world. He’s quick to deflect praise however. “Scotland set the benchmark for modern blending,” he says, “They take a fully sensory approach. They have so many more components to work with and the option to trade between many distilleries. Sometimes one distillery might have 45 different malts and grains to choose from when blending. It’s a luxury we didn’t have, so managing inventory became incredibly important.”
“At the end of the day it’s about consistency. How can we maintain quality over the portfolio while still innovating? The risk for me has always been that innovating one brand could blur the line between it and another.”
Redbreast’s pathway over the past few years is a great example of the careful management and certain risk needed to push boundaries. “Redbreast’s style, its identity, is driven by its Oloroso cask maturation,” he explains. “When we set out to create variations like the 27-year-old, which brought an element of port into the portfolio, I worried. At the back of my mind I knew that the port was working really well, but I had to ask myself, is it taking the Redbreast consumer a little bit too far in the wrong direction? Are we stretching the category too much?”
Sense of risk
That sense of risk, contained as it is behind closed doors, gives a wonderful glimpse of the blender’s role, the responsibility they have to a brand that is so much more than just a product. Not surprisingly, the consumer quickly let him know that his worry over the 27-year-old was unfounded. The port pipe influence married perfectly with Redbreast’s robust makeup.
Redbreast is also the point of origin for a range of single casks that have been produced in partnership with other engines of the industry – premium bars, restaurants and retailers. They each represent a slice of the Redbreast journey and as a function of their rarity, each bottle has come to be a collector’s item in its own right.
Leighton is passionate about this process and its dependency on cask selection and the impact of wood. The single cask partnership programme at IDL allows him to really explore this relationship and discover new profiles within its boundaries.
The Single Malt Shop single cask release of Redbreast 22
The single cask produced for the Single Malt Shop is a case in point. Filled in 1997 into ex-bourbon casks, this 22-year-old finished its maturation in oloroso sherry and the flavour profile of both of these components play their own role in the final output. “Every cask has its own variation and in this cask we set out to peel back the layers of Redbreast to really examine the role of bourbon and its subsequent marriage with sherry.
“You could compare the Single Malt Shop cask to the first Dream Cask, the 32-year-old. It went through the same kind of process, starting off in bourbon and transferring to the sherry. Every cask is the result of a sensory assessment in the warehouse and in the lab. We’re trying to find the right balance of the whiskey components.
“With the Single Malt Shop’s cask, we were searching for the sweetness of the bourbon and the prunes and dried fruits of the oloroso. But then we wanted to capture the contribution of the wood itself. The cinnamon, clove and vanilla. The contribution European oak delivers bring forth all these earthy, nutty notes – the leather and heavier organic components. Discovering these is our job as blenders.”
Cask maturation
The passion for cask maturation threads throughout his storytelling. His description of the warehouses, the products they deliver, the sheer volume of casks he has to choose from today. “We select the very best cask every single time,” he says. “There sometimes seems to be a sense that when working on a single cask partnership that a distillery will keep the best casks for themselves, but I can assure you that every single cask offering that leaves Midleton is the very best we have. We’re not going to put our name to anything we don’t trust.”
In recent times the bourbon distillery Heaven’s Door followed that thread of excellence, approaching him to collaborate with Redbreast on their series with Bob Dylan, above. They planned to finish a 10-year-old Tennessee bourbon in an ex-Redbreast cask to capture that whiskey’s influence. Leighton likes the ethos of Heaven’s Door, their approach to craft and cask selection. The chance to work with Bob Dylan, who has never hidden his interest in Irish music, was an obvious one, he says. “He’s really involved in the whiskey, the flavour profile, the finish. He designs the labels and the bottles. We shipped the Redbreast casks. Every three months Ryan Perry, the Heaven’s Door master blender, would send us samples and the three of us, Perry, Bob Dylan and I would try it. It was a fascinating experience. The bourbon was quite slow to take on the sherry influence. It came along in a very controlled and balanced way. Once the sherry got momentum though, we had to be careful it didn’t go too far. We all arrived at the same point in the tasting together, agreeing it was ready.”
It was a huge hit, with many critics naming it their favourite whiskey of 2021. Predictably, Covid got in the way of a planned meetup of these three creatives, preventing Billy Leighton from meeting a man whose name is an unchallenged legend.
Redbreast in high heels
As names go, Billy Leighton’s has become legendary itself and appearances at public events and whiskey conferences, while not quite at the rock star level, always cause a stir among fans. “It’s a great privilege that people want to meet you,” he says. “It’s one of the thrills I get in the job. Sometimes I notice people are nervous to speak to me so I go right up to them. There’s a lot of reward in it. You get that immediate feedback from consumers. I remember meeting a man in 2016, soon after the launch of Redbreast Lustau, who described that release as like drinking Redbreast 12 in high heels. I loved that,” he says laughing.
Thankfully, that love of what he does means Billy Leighton is not retiring yet. Having spent decades travelling between Cork and Coleraine he was an early adopter of a blended lifestyle that many people are now experiencing for the first time. His pursuit of balance in all things has allowed him to tune into a lifestyle that works. He’s incredibly grateful for it.
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