The Balvenie

Of all the houses I have walked alongside, The Balvenie has held a particular place. Mortlach is Speyside at its meatiest. The Macallan is Speyside at its sherry-cask discipline. Glenmorangie is the Highland counterpoint. Louis XIII is decanter-led patience. The Balvenie is Speyside at the patient hand — the five rare crafts that the maison has practised at Dufftown since 1892, and the discipline I have recognised in my own work when I have met them.

I have held The Balvenie close for longer than the public record carries. The William Grant & Sons house has been the discipline I read against most often when I think about what restraint actually asks of me — not as theatre, but as how the hands move when no-one is watching. The Shin’Labo Food Pairing programme of April – May 2022 is where the maison and I met on the public record. What sits before that — the years of paying attention to what David Stewart was doing at his bench — is the part I do not put on paper, because I do not need to.

The Balvenie, in their own words

The Balvenie was founded in 1892 at Dufftown, Banffshire, a quarter-mile from Glenfiddich and adjacent to Mortlach. It has distilled continuously since 1893. The maison sits within William Grant & Sons — the family-held Scottish distiller William Grant founded in 1887, still owned and run by the Grants today. That family-house identity matters; it sits at a different place from the corporate-portfolio that holds The Macallan (Edrington), Mortlach (Diageo), or Glenmorangie (LVMH/MHD).

What the maison’s own marketing names the five rare crafts is the heart of why I have read against this house for so long.

Each of these has been displaced almost everywhere else in Scotch by economy, scale, or modernisation. The Balvenie has held them. I read that as the discipline of not abandoning the crafts that make the spirit what it is — and the same discipline I have tried to keep with my own hands.

On David C. Stewart MBE. From 1962 to 2023 — sixty-one years — David Stewart was Malt Master at The Balvenie. He pioneered cask-finishing as a published technique, mentored the maison’s current generation, and held the standard at his bench for the better part of a working lifetime. His successor since 2023 is Kelsey McKechnie, mentored under his hand. My work with The Balvenie sits inside Stewart’s tenure. The discipline I read against was the discipline he held.

The Balvenie × Shin’Labo Food Pairing programme — April – May 2022

The programme that placed the maison and my work at one table ran at Shin’Labo by James Won, Mitsui Shopping Park Lalaport KL Bukit Bintang City Centre, between 13 April and 11 May 2022. Five outlets carried the programme inside that four-week window, in two languages.

Shin’Labo had opened on 15 February 2022 — by April the room had been operating for two months, and the Macallan Dining Experience had begun the same day Shin’Labo did. The Balvenie programme is therefore the second prestige-spirit chapter that room hosted. The pairing format was already in operation; I plated the Balvenie expressions against it on the discipline the room had already settled into.

The press record carries the programme cleanly. The earliest dated coverage was Goody25 on 13 April; the latest was Pin Prestige on 11 May. Between those, Kings Sleeve, Moretify, and Gentscode Magazine carried the work at weight. Two outlets covered it in Chinese (Pin Prestige and Moretify), three in English. Gentscode’s framing — An Exquisite Evening with The Balvenie — Chef James Won — sits as the programme’s title-bearing reference.

The format was the prestige-spirit pairing pattern Shin’Labo had been built for. Courses against expressions. The maison’s spirit at the centre of the plate, not beside it. The room’s weight carried by the discipline of the pairing rather than by the rarity of the pour.

Speyside Dufftown — two houses, two temperaments

The spirits work has two maisons that share the same town, and the house at this page is one of them. Mortlach and The Balvenie are both Dufftown distilleries. They sit at opposite poles of what Speyside can do.

Mortlach is the Beast of Dufftown. Its 2.81-times distillation regime imparts a meatiness that the Mortlach Room at MeatMore (October 2023 – 2024) was built to honour. Dense. Structural. Dark.

The Balvenie is the discipline opposite the Beast. Barley grown at home. Floor malting still in operation. The Malt Master’s palate as instrument. Patient. Crafted. Lit from within rather than weighted from below.

I hold them as paired houses, not collapsed into one. Same town. Different temperaments. The spirits work I have walked through in twelve years has needed both — the structural and the patient. Speyside Dufftown has given me that pairing on the same single road.

What I have tried to honour at The Balvenie

The work with The Balvenie is held with the honesty I would want from any partner I have walked alongside.

I do not position the maison as my voice. The five rare crafts are theirs, sustained by their hands, in Dufftown, since 1892. My contribution is one four-week programme at one Kuala Lumpur fine-dining room in 2022. The proportion is honoured.

I name David C. Stewart MBE because the discipline I have read against is the discipline he held at his bench for sixty-one years. To recognise the maison without recognising the figure who held its standard would be incomplete.

I do not over-extend the personal. My regard for the maison is named once at the centre of this page and held there. I am not sentimental about The Balvenie; I am precise about it.

What I practise and what The Balvenie practises are not the same thing — they sit on the same standard. The patient hand is what I have read against this maison for, and what I have tried to bring to my own work in the years before and after the 2022 programme. That is the work I have tried to honour, and the maison I have been honoured by.