feints The OED defines feints as The impure spirit which comes over first and last in the process of distillation', but in whisky-making circles they are now usually considered to be only the 'lasts'. Feints are also sometimes referred to as 'aftershots' or the 'tail', with the ⇒foreshots correspondingly being known as the ⇒head, and the ⇒middle cut as the ⇒heart. Some distillers combine the terms and talk of 'the foreshots and the tails'.
The plural is always employed, and the spelling variant of 'faints' also occurs historically, as in the first recorded use of the term in 1743: 'Is it not a great Fault among Distillers, to allow any of the Faints to run among their pure Goods?' 'Feints' is in use by 1816, but both variants occur during the 1880s. Alfred Barnard favoured the spelling in modern usage. (WDotUK) Being in derivation a substantive plural of faint, the term seems in its application to distilling to have the sense of 'wanting in strength', 'weak' or 'feeble'.
After the initial process of malt whisky distillation has taken place in the ⇒wash still, the ⇒low wines are transferred into the spirit or low wines still for the second distillation. 'This time very great care has to be taken to retain only that part of the distillate which has the appropriate alcohol concentration and character for what is now the new whisky. The first part of the distillate, the foreshots, which are too strong and impure, and the last part, the feints, are discarded by turning them into a feints receiver for redistillation in the next batch. No alcohol is wasted'. (WoS)
The skill and experience of the ⇒stillman determines just when ⇒cutting takes place, and the existence of feints and foreshots is detected by tests he carries out in the ⇒spirit safe. One test is to add distilled water to the spirit, and if it turns cloudy then impurities are present.
According to Neil Wilson, 'The feints consist of the heavier compounds and less volatile constituents of the low wines such as fusel oil, which although undesirable compared to the purer ethanol of the middle cut appear (with some elements of the foreshots) in small quantities in the final product, helping to contribute to the character of each malt whisky'. (S&W) From feints comes the adjective feinty, and Grindal, writing of the rare occasions on which distillers can be persuaded to speak ill of their rivals' products, notes that 'the most common criticism of a malt whisky will be that it is "too feinty" - in other words the collection of the spirit has been allowed to continue for too long'. (SoW)
⇒Irish pot still whiskey production involves triple distillation, which means that even more of the feints and foreshots are removed during the third distillation, ensuring, in the words of Irish Distillers, 'maximum purity of the spirit'. The company is not correct, however, in its assertion that 'no other whisk(e)y in the world is distilled more than twice', as a number of Scottish malts have traditionally been triple-distilled, including the Lowland Auchentoshan. Springbank from Campbeltown is effectively distilled 'two and a half times', as two spirit stills are used in its production, one for the low wines and the other for redistilling the feints and foreshots.
In American ⇒moonshine circles and amongst ⇒poitín distillers in Ireland, low wines are often known as ⇒singlings, and the second distillation is the 'second' or 'doubling' run. In the United States the equivalent of the Scottish spirit still is known as a 'doubler still'. Feints are referred to as 'backings', and as in professional distilleries they are usually re-distilled with the next batch of singlings.
Terms such as 'backings' and 'singlings' are never used in Scottish distilleries, not even in a colloquial 'shop floor' sense, where the jargon words of production such as ⇒draff, feints, foreshots, low wines, ⇒mash, ⇒wash, ⇒wort etc are now officially designated by HMRC.
In Irish pot still triple distillation, the 'middle' still is frequently referred to as the ⇒feints still, and sometimes as the '⇒low wines and feint(s) still'. www.classicwhiskey.com describes the process of Irish distillation as follows:
The wash is heated in the first still (Wash still) and condensed into low wines This then goes to the second still (Low wines and Feint still) where more impurities are removed and feints are collected. The feints then go to a third still (Spirit still) where a further refining of the spirit takes place The result is the production of a colourless spirit which has a high alcohol content.
Usage of 'feints still' extends beyond Ireland, with Alfred Barnard (WDotUK) employing it when writing about a visit to London's Lea Valley Distillery during the 1880s. ' ... the still House, a lofty apartment, 60 feet long by 25 feet wide, containing three handsome Pot Stills, made by Fleming, Bennet, and McLaren, and all heated by steam. They consist of a Wash Still, holding 4,000 gallons; a Feints Still, 3,000 gallons; and a Spirit Still, 1,500 gallons'.
The term 'low wines and feints still' was also formerly applied in Scotland to what is now usually known as the ⇒spirit still, though usage of 'low wines still' is still comparatively common. Recalling his tour of Ballechin Distillery in Perthshire, Barnard (ibid) writes, 'We now retraced our steps to the Brewing House, at the end of which are placed two antiquated Pot Stills, a Wash Still, holding 753 gallons, and a Low Wines and Feints Still, holding 660 gallons'. See also ⇒congenerics, ⇒run.
Ferintosh A village near Dingwall in Ross and Cromarty, northeast Scotland, and subsequently the name given to a kind of whisky produced there during the 18th century. A Ferintosh Distillery, also sometimes known as Ben Wyvis, operated in Dingwall from 1879 until 1926. According to Robert Forsyth (BoS), Ferintosh whisky 'was much relished in Scotland; it had a strong flavour of the smoke of the peat with which the malt of which it was made was dried; but this was considered as one of the marks of it being genuine.'
As the anonymous editor of Nimmo's 1867 edition of The Complete Works of Robert Burns wrote in his illustrative note to the poem 'Scotch Drink', 'as Ferintosh whisky was cheaper than that produced elsewhere, it became very popular, and the name Ferintosh thus became something of a synonyme for whisky over the country'. It was to retain that apparent synonym until the early years of the 20th century, as is illustrated by Ian MacDonald's observation in Smuggling in the Highlands (1914) that a London spirits dealer was at that time still supplying a brand of whisky called Ferintosh. 'This alone is sufficient to show how highly prized Ferintosh whisky must have been', wrote MacDonald.
Prince Charles Edward Stuart - 'Bonnie Prince Charlie' - is reputed to have drowned his sorrows in Ferintosh whisky after the Jacobite defeat at nearby Culloden in 1746, and Sir Walter Scott was a great admirer of the product, writing to the poet and dramatist Joanna Baillie in December 1813 that he had 'plenty of right good and young Highland Ferintosh'. It is interesting to note that 'young' was clearly not a pejorative adjective to apply to whisky at that time.
The Ferintosh story is unique in Scottish distilling history, as the Forbes family of Culloden who owned the operation were granted exemption from payment of normal excise duties between 1690 and 1784. Duncan Forbes was a staunch supporter of the Protestant King William III who deposed the Catholic James II in 1688, and his estates were laid waste during the Jacobite rebellion in favour of James the following year, with damage valued at £5,400 Scots or £4,500 sterling being caused to Ferintosh Distillery. By way of compensation, the Scottish parliament granted him the right to distil at Ferintosh in perpetuity on payment of 400 marks Scots per year, a perk which lasted until 1784, when it disappeared with the introduction of new excise legislation. The amount of monetary compensation - £21,580 - was decided upon by a jury before the Scottish Court of Exchequer; despite the fact that the Forbes family was satisfied by the outcome, Robert Burns, for one, was not. His poem 'Scotch Drink'. (1785) and 'The Author's Earnest Cry and Prayer' of the following year articulate his feelings at the loss of the Ferintosh privilege and the repressive state of the excise laws relating to whisky in general:
Thee, Ferintosh! Oh, sadly lost!
Scotland lament frae coast to coast!
Now colic grips, and barkin' hoast
May kill us a';
For loyal Forbes's charter'd boast
Is ta'en awa'!
fermentation Adaptation of Latin fermentãtiõn-em, first recorded in 1601, 'Some used to put therunto (the juice out of mulberries) myrrhe and cypresse, setting all to frie and take their fermentation in the sun.' As a verb, however, ferment dates from 1398, 'Soure dough hyghte fermentum, for it makyth paast ferment and maketh it also aryse'. Fermentation was first used figuratively - in the sense of being excited by emotion or passion - in c.1660, 'A young man in the highest fermentation of his youthful lusts'.
The ⇒brewing process consists of ⇒mashing and fermentation, with the latter changing ⇒wort to ⇒wash in the ⇒washbacks with the addition of ⇒yeast, although in Irish distilling circles fermentation is usually considered as an entirely separate process from brewing.
After leaving the ⇒mash tuns in the ⇒tun room, the wort is cooled before being pumped or gravity-fed to the washbacks, where living yeast is added to induce fermentation, the temperature being maintained at 20°-32°C to keep the yeast active.
Yeast, for all its extraordinary capacity to set things seething, is really a delicate plant of a rather low order whose minute cells grow by a process of budding, yet in prime condition amidst prime wort it causes the liveliest commotion that I know of in nature. It needs oxygen to breathe, and as the oxygen of the air is kept away from it in the wash back, it turns upon the sugar to take the oxygen out of that, and in the process decomposes it into alcohol and carbonic acid. That anyway and roughly is Pasteur's theory of what takes place. (W&S)
The production of carbon dioxide causes the wash to bubble and froth, often with some violence. 'I have heard one of those backs rock and roar in a perfect reproduction of a really dirty night at sea,' Gunn recalls. Generations of distillery workers have taken a delight in opening the lids of washbacks and inviting unwary visitors to sniff the contents. The presence of carbon dioxide and lack of oxygen means that 'the effect on nostrils and lungs is as sharp as an electric shock on the fingers and much more unpleasant'. (W&S) The process of ⇒fermentation lasts for some 48 hours, and the resultant wash of no more than 10% ⇒alcohol is similar to strong beer.
Fermentation is generally considered to be just as important a stage of whisky-making as the process of ⇒distillation which follows, in terms of the effects it can have upon the finished product. As Gunn puts it, 'It might please Rabelais to reflect that the more rousing the life, the surer is the brewer of a generous quantity of spirit. Not but that a slower, gentler fermentation may produce a more saintly spirit. There is always an ideal in those things. But where so much can go wrong, the brewer is always happy to see a merry ferment'. (ibid.)
If fermentation takes place too rapidly and the temperature of the wash rises above 33° or 34°C the spirit to be distilled can be adversely affected, as the coarse acids, alcohols and aldehydes that will give harshness to the final whisky are created at high temperatures.
As the first stage of whisky production during which alcohol is created, fermentation is where ⇒excise supervision traditionally commences.
fillers A term used by blenders to denote the malt whiskies used principally to add bulk and a degree of 'balance' to their blends. They are usually less highly individualistic in character and less expensive than the most favoured blending malts.
The OED defines fillers as 'Something used to fill a cavity, stop a gap, complete a load or charge, make bulk, etc', and the first usage occurs in 1591. 'Laying in the mouth of the sack certaine choise coles, which they call fillers, to make the sack shew faire'. (Robert Greene - A Notable Discovery of Coosnage)
'The "Third Class" malts were considered as useful "fillers", balancing the flavours of the other whiskies'. (Charles MacLean, WMag, The Nosing Course, Issue 4, June 1999)
fillings New whisky. The OED defines fill as 'A quantity sufficient to fill a receptacle or empty space; a filling, charge'. The first attestation dates from 1555, and occurs in Ludlow Churchwardens' Accounts as 'Paid for a fylle of tymber …'
'Having settled on the formula for its blend, the blending company must buy the necessary quantities of new whiskies from the different distilleries and allow it to mature. The custom of the trade is that the blending company buys new whisky as "fillings" and provides the casks to be filled. The whisky is then allowed to mature in the distillery warehouses until, in the opinion of the blender, it is ready to be added to his blend'. (MSW)
Cooper points out that 'Nowadays many large firms remove their fillings as soon as they have been put in casks and mature them in their own warehouses', (CCtW) while Marshall Robb writes, 'Grain whiskies, sometimes called silent spirit or just "fillings", although they now cost about two-thirds of the filling price of malts, do not respond so much to ageing beyond about four years ... '. (SW3)
Brand new ⇒cask are rarely used for the maturation of Scotch whisky as the influence of new wood is too assertive, and instead previously-used casks are employed.
'The first time they are filled with Scotch they are called "first-fill casks", thereafter they are called "refills". Some companies refer to "second-fill" or even "third-fill".' (MMoW).
The type of whisky which the cask has previously held is taken into account, as a filling of an assertive ⇒Islay malt would alter the flavour of a delicate ⇒Lowland malt, just as different types of sherry affect the first and subsequent whisky fillings of the cask.
Inevitably, the maturing effect of the cask diminishes with successive fillings, though the duration of ⇒fillings is also significant. A third-fill cask may only have contained spirit for nine years, if maturation periods for its contents were short, while a first-fill cask could contain the same whisky for 30 years or more.
finger First used as a measurement - the breadth of a finger - in c.1400, 'Nere a foot lang and v. fyngers on brede'. Finger was also sometimes taken as a specific measurement: three-quarters of an inch.
It is first recorded in slang usage relating to a nip of alcoholic liquor in the United States in 1888, where the Newport Journal reported the following conversational snippet between two farmers: 'Which is correct, spoonfuls or spoons-ful?' 'In Denver we say fingers'. The French doigt is used in the same context. 'Take a small, thimble-shaped "shot" glass, hold two fingers horizontally alongside it, and fill it with whiskey to that level ... You now have two fingers of whiskey'.
(WGtW).
finish 1 With the sense of 'The conclusion, last stage, termination', finish is first attested in 1793 and is employed as a term in the sensory evaluation of whisky, frequently used along with colour, ⇒nose and ⇒palate. The finish is essentially the aftertaste of a whisky. Most analysts, including Michael Jackson (MWC), Jim Murray (JMWB) and John Lamond and Robin Tucek (MF) examine whiskies using finish as the final element in their assessment.
Jim Murray (JMWB, 2008) makes the point that the finish is '… often the least understood part of a tasting. This is the tail and flourish of the whisky's signature, often revealing the effects of ageing. The better whiskies tend to finish well and longer without too much oak excess'.
'Short' and 'long' are the two most common words used to describe the finish of a whisky, but there are many variants; Lamond, for example, describes the finish of Glen Garioch as 'Good, smooth, delicate', whilst Tobermory 'Finishes smokily and rather woody'. (MF)
finish 2 A secondary, and more recent use of the term finish with regard to whisky has the OED sense of 'That which finishes, or serves to give completeness or perfection to anything', first attested by Josiah Wedgwood in correspondence of 1779. 'We have formed a ... school, which I have ... some notion of ... continuing instead of sending them [sc. children] from home again, unless by way of finish'.
This secondary use of finish, sometimes known as ⇒wood finish, in a whisky-related context is with reference to the practice of transferring a whisky from its original cask after a substantial period of maturation to a secondary cask which has previously held another alcoholic drink. Here it is 'finished' for anything from a few months to a couple of years. This provides variations on 'house' style, giving producers range extensions which may be very useful in the promotion of their brand.
The most common finishes feature various styles of sherry, but others include rum, Madeira, Burgundy and port. Opinion is divided on the merits of finishing whisky, with critics suggesting that the practice is sometimes used to mask spirit of comparatively poor quality. Because the term may be perceived to have pejorative connotations, a number of euphemisms have been coined within the Scotch whisky industry, including 'additional cask enhancement'. (ACE), which is favoured by Bruichladdich Distillery supremo Mark Reynier.
The term 'finish' is frequently employed in formal product titles, eg Glenmorangie Madeira Wood Finish. Michael Jackson writes that 'When Glenmorangie took some whisky from the usual bourbon barrels and gave it a few months' extra maturation in port pipes, a new category of Scotch whisky was born: the wood finish (W:DWG).
firewater An essentially colloquial term for any strong and fiery liquor, sometimes hyphenated to fire-water, and most frequently applied specifically to whisky. It is originally attributed to the North American Indians, and Partridge (DoHS) suggests the name derives from the fact that if one applied a match to the liquor it would catch fire. A more plausible view is that it derives from the pronounced burning sensation that the clear and apparently innocuous liquid gave when swallowed. Partridge also notes the now obsolete expression 'liquid fire', which he defines as 'bad whisky'.
'Fire-water' is first recorded by JF Cooper in The Last of the Mohicans (1826): 'His Canada father ... taught him to drink the fire-water, and he became a rascal', and it had become anglicised, according to Partridge, by c.1850, achieving the status of standard English by 1890. In that year it is used without the hyphen by J Hughes in Tom Brown at Oxford - 'Awful firewater we used to get' - but Lockhart hyphenates it as 'the fire-water of the illicit stills of the cities ... '. (Sc) In current usage the hyphen is usually omitted:
'And all those lemonade bottles of firewater you buy for a fiver must come from somewhere'. (SoA)
first run Usually refers to the production of ⇒low wines, which, according to Gunn (W&S), 'is weak, impure spirit, offensive to the nostrils, and quite undrinkable'. (See ⇒run)
flight A number of whiskies sampled in one tasting. The implication is that the whiskies in the flight are all from one company or distillery or have some other common factor, such as all being selected from the same age range, making comparison particularly interesting or instructive.
The origins of the noun with this sort of usage are obscure, but perhaps relate to the expression 'arrows of the same flight,' where the implication is that all have the same power of flight, are of equal size and weight.
First recorded usage of flight in this context occurs in Roger Ascham's Toxophilus, the Schole of Shootinge (1545) as, 'You must haue diuerse shaftes of one flight, fethered with diuerse winges, for diuerse windes'.
'Renowned whisky expert Lincoln Henderson returns to lead his popular tasting of a full flight of Yamazaki whiskies'. (www.maltadvocate.com, 2008)
foreshots The first raw runnings of the second distillation of the Low Wines', according to Cooper (CCtW) The term is initially recorded in The British Medical Journal (1893): 'The alcohol which had not passed over in the "fore-shots" and the "clean spirits".' Foreshots are also known as the ⇒head of the distillation, when the ⇒middle cut is the ⇒heart and the ⇒feints are the ⇒tail. The hyphenated 'fore-shots' rarely appears in modern usage, and though Gunn writes of 'the foreshot', the plural form is usually employed as in 'feints'. Fore has the sense of 'before' or 'in front of, though the use of shot or shots in relation to production of spirit is obscure. The noun, however, has the sense of a rush or flow of water from c.1400.
'The first flow [during secondary distillation] known as the foreshots, is strong and oily, containing as it does an excess of esters, aldehydes and acids - it is this unwanted spirit which when mixed with water turns cloudy', according to Cooper (CCtW) As with the feints, the volatile compounds of the foreshots which boil off first during distillation are re-distilled along with the next batch of low wines, and their presence in small quantities is also important to the character of the finished whisky.
The expression 'foreshots and feints' is sometimes used colloquially to signify less important or less substantial items, 'bits and pieces'. The Malt Whisky Association's newsletter, The Malt Letter, contains a page of news snippets under that heading. (See also ⇒congenerics, ⇒cutting, ⇒first run.)
fou' Also fu. Colloquial Scots variation of 'full', i.e. full of drink, drunk. The apostrophe is optional, and the adjective is now frequently used with qualifications such as 'blin'. (blind), 'roarin', and in phrases such as 'fou as a puggie'. ('puggie' being Scots for jackpot, the 'bank' in a card school). Partridge (DoHS) also recognises 'greetin' fu' ', literally 'crying drunk'.
First recorded usage dates from 1535, in Sir David Lyndsay's Ane Pleasant Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis: 'Na he is wod drunkin I trow; Se e not that he is won fow?' Lyndsay's spelling variant had become obsolete by the early 19th century, being replaced by the current fou', with fu' also in use from the late 18th century.
'I amna fou' sae muckle as tired - deid dune'. Hugh MacDiarmid (A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle, 1926)
fusel oil Adaptation of German fusel - bad brandy or other spirits, German fuseln - to bungle. 'A term for a mixture of several homologous alcohols, chiefly amylic acid, and especially applied to this when in its crude form'.
The first use of fusel oil is in 1850: 'Being abundantly obtained during the distillation of potatoes ... the name of the oil of potato spirit, or fusel oil, has been assigned to it'. In 1868 it is noted that, 'A particularly foetid oil, termed "fusel oil", is formed in making brandy and whisky.' (See also ⇒feints and ⇒first run.)