Ahead of International Women’s Day, we celebrate three female Master Blenders, whose knowledge, expertise, experience, attention to detail and, well, noses have made them veritable celebrities in the world of scotch. The first of them is Dr. Rachel Barrie, Master Blender for BenRiach, The GlenDronach and Glenglassaugh.
Glenglassaugh’s Master Blender is one of the most prominent voices in whisky – she was inducted into the Whisky Hall of Fame in 2018 and is dubbed ‘The First Lady of Scotch’. She is also, hands-down, one of our favourite people to speak to – to be in her presence is to be subject to her incredible warmth and generous spirit. And we personally love her because underneath the scotch scholar and connoisseur is the soul of a poet – you’ll see what we mean in her comments below.
Dr. Barrie has spent over three decades in whisky, beginning her whisky career as a research scientist at the Scotch Whisky Research Institute. Today, she creates some of the world’s finest single malts for BenRiach, The GlenDronach and Glenglassaugh.
Glenglassaugh – a rare coastal whisky – hasn’t been at the tip of the tongues of casual drinkers. But that changed in January this year when they released the Rare Serpentine Coastal Cask comprising of three vintages – a 48, 49 and 51-year-old in a gorgeous event at Marguerite in Gardens by the Bay in January, and brought regional attention to the brand.
The cask is named for the rare and exquisite blue-green serpentine marble found on the coastline near Glenglassaugh, a marble used through the centuries in sculpture design in some of the most luxurious palaces of the world. Dr. Barrie said, “Each rare Serpentine cask is like a seamless sculpture, silken and lustrous, shaped by land and sea over the passage of time. Glenglassaugh awakens the senses, almost transcending the idea of single malt with its luscious coastal sweetness caressed by an ocean breeze.”
The Glenglassaugh brand might not be familiar to enthusiasts here, to be fair. After all, it was only revived in 2016, thirty years after its distillery closed in 1986, and its core Coastal Malts range only hit our shores in late 2023, and the bar shelves of London only a year before that. But what the industry failed to see in 1986 is our gain, as Glenglassaugh expressions tend to have a uniquely clean, light and sweet flavour profile that allow them to stand out. And at the heart of this Glenglassaugh revival is Dr. Rachel Barrie.
“Glenglassaugh is shaped by the visible and invisible influences of land and sea,” says Dr. Barrie. “The distillery is located on the lush shores of Sandend Bay, deeply nourished by the ocean surf. Reflective of its name, Glenglassaugh is born from the natural elements of the sea, shaped by the abundance of its unique coastline.”
She explains, “The spring water used to distill Glenglassaugh has been filtered through a landscape of limestone and sandstone sea minerals. This gives it five times the minerality of the average water source in Scotland.”
And this location is central to the Glenglassaugh’s unique flavour profiles. “Sea air permeates the distillery influencing fermentation in our wooden washbacks. Following distillation, oak casks breathe in the ocean as Glenglassaugh matures and mellows into the most luscious coastal malt elixir.”
