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01 July 2009
Secret Science
By
Andrew Beach
Unfiltered visits the laboratory of drinks analysts Tatlock & Thomson to find out what the ‘men in white coats’ are up to
In a light-filled laboratory overlooking the Fife coastline, white-coated scientists are unlocking the clues to some of the biggest threats facing the Scotch whisky industry.
Whether it is the sale of fake ‘Scotch’ in South America, the possible contamination of tanker-loads of legitimate export Scotch or simply a Glasgow bar suspected of watering down its whisky, the chemists at Tatlock & Thomson, analysts to the drinks industry since 1891, will examine the evidence and reveal the answers.
It’s a vital behind-the-scenes role and, without this kind of analysis, the makers of Scotch would face the risk of lost sales and immense damage to the value of their brands.
To enter the main lab on the second floor of the Old Corn Exchange building in Inverkeithing is to enter a world at once prosaic – boxes of microscope slides, huge tanks of high purity hydrogen, vacuum ovens looking like big microwaves – and also unexpectedly beautiful: a labyrinth-like coil of tubes connects a vial of liquid the brilliant green of a hummingbird’s wing with another that glows as red as the finest ruby. In another part of the lab, a drop added to a test tube of water here and another there creates writhing swirls of orange and purple.
Adding to the sense of oddness are the half-empty bottles and glasses of spirits and wine – whisky, gin, even a couple of bottles of sambuca – that fill many tables and benches, making the lab look (and smell) like the morning after a particularly boisterous office party. But, of course, there is significant work under way here. Owner and managing director Dr Harry Riffkin says that alongside detecting adulteration and substitution, the major part of the lab’s work is to provide independent quality control analysis, both of the spirits themselves and of the water that is used to distil them.
“Substitution of Scotch is a big problem around the world,” he says. “During the mid-90s, we were working in India where an empty bottle of [Johnnie Walker] Black Label whisky was worth at least as much as a full bottle because it could be refilled with local spirit and passed off as the real thing. It is a bit more under control now, but there are still countries in Europe and South America where there are huge problems.”
Nowadays, the fakers don’t have to rely on refilling old bottles. “Now it can all be faked – the labels, the bottles, caps. It’s very easy to do and the profits are enormous.”
Proving that what is being sold as Scotch is a fake is not just about protecting market share and brand reputation: sometimes there can be major public health and safety considerations. Harry says the firm was once asked to analyse some ‘whisky’ samples that had been collected in a Middle East market. “All whisky contains small amounts of methanol, because that is a natural product of the distillation process, but these samples had no methanol at all in them. In fact, what they contained was ethanol fuel from the oil industry that was full of toxic and carcinogenic hydrocarbons.
“Another example was when a new brand of vodka was introduced into the UK market. We tested it and it was sky-high in methanol, way beyond the safe limits.”
The export quality control analysis the lab does is equally essential for the UK drinks industry. Whisky, gin, vodka and other alcoholic drinks all have to meet very strict import requirements when selling into foreign markets. Harry says that the firm is doing a lot of work for customers looking to export to Taiwan, which has extremely stringent requirements. “We are testing for trace pesticide levels, bacteria counts, heavy metals such as lead, arsenic, cadmium or mercury, general levels of copper, zinc and magnesium, and sulphur dioxide.”
For whisky, many countries also require proof of minimum levels of maturation. A whisky that has been matured in oak wood will contain chemical markers in specific ratios, which Tatlock & Thomson use to confirm that the colour and flavour of the drink are in fact due to maturation in a cask and not the result of artificial additives.
“In a lot of countries, the use of flavouring in cheap alcohol is perfectly normal. It is only when they try and pass it off as Scotch whisky that it becomes a problem. If they are selling it as blended Indian whisky or blended Canadian whisky, they can do what they want, but what they can’t do is then try and sell into Europe as whisky because it has to meet the minimum definition as set by European regulation.”
Like any good detective story, sudden emergencies can pop up requiring urgent laboratory work. Often they involve valuable export shipments of Scotch that can’t be unloaded at a foreign port because the paperwork isn’t in order or the spirit has gone cloudy. “A lot of whisky goes out in bulk tankers, and sometimes you can get contamination from the previous cargo. One recent job we took on was where a seal had been broken on a tanker and the client needed to be able to show that what was inside was indeed the correct product.”
The firm’s analytical work also covers wine, beer and liqueurs, along with raw materials such as water, cereals, malt, molasses, sugars, yeast and general microbiological analysis. It also studies the wood used for cooperages.
It is also often involved in the development of new products and new expressions to meet consumer demand – for example, undertaking analysis to create gin styles and flavours. Overseas work has included helping develop the prize-winning Old Potrero Single Malt Rye Whiskey for the Anchor Distillery in San Francisco.
Tatlock & Thomson has just expanded and upgraded its facilities, building a new lab and installing the first inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometer in the Scotch whisky industry. This offers extremely sensitive elemental analysis and will be used mainly in testing water. It will also help Tatlock & Thomson maintain its support for the growing global Scotch whisky industry.
“We’re a service lab and our lifeblood is the success of the Scotch whisky industry,” says Harry. “It’s absolutely vital that they continue to make the sales, because sales levels often determine new spirit production, and we will do whatever we have to do to support them: if they ask us to jump we ask how high?”
Knowledge ~ at the cutting-edge for more than 115 years
Tatlock & Thomson was created in 1891 in response to the rampant adulteration of food and drink in the 19th-century.
To counter the huge risk to public health and safety, the Government set up public analyst facilities in major cities. Robert Tatlock, a trained chemist from Glasgow, was appointed one of the first city analysts.
This period coincided with the development of continuous distillation techniques which allowed the production of huge quantities of relatively cheap and potable alcohol, which could be used to adulterate more expensive alcohol, primarily Scotch whisky.
“Cayenne pepper was often added to gin to give it more of a hit and the food chain was so corrupt that even the cayenne pepper was adulterated, with red lead,” says Harry.
As well as the food and drink industry, Tatlock & Thomson also did a lot of work for Scotland’s steel industry, analysing coal and iron ore.
Harry, who had been head of Distillation Studies at Pentlands Scotch Whisky Research, led the purchase of the firm in 1993 and moved it from Glasgow to Fife.
A big role in a small distillery
Tatlock & Thomson was given the chance to put its theoretical and analytical skills into practice when it was given the contract to design from scratch a new malt whisky distillery on the Swedish island of Hven.
The distillery is very small – on its website, Hven says it may be the world’s smallest commercial pot still distillery – and that allowed it to be entirely built in Elgin on the Moray Firth by Northern Fabricators and then shipped in pieces to Sweden for assembly in 2008.
Tatlock & Thomson introduced a series of innovative measures such as a process of mashing control that allows very high quality work to be produced on a consistent basis, and a temperature control on the fermenters, which only one or two distilleries in Scotland have.
The distillery also uses extremely high-quality wood to mature its whisky, using a system similar to that used by Cognac makers in which the spirit is moved from barrel to barrel during the maturation, moving from newer wood to older wood.
“To improve quality meant looking at all their processes,” Harry said. “To do what we did with Hven with an existing distillery would be quite another thing. But this was a great chance to show what can be done.”
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