Dreaming and drinking in colour
Fettercairn’s whisky maker Gregg Glass’ notebook shows how he tastes in colour
Fettercairn’s new Vanguard Series has been created across a multi-year, multi-barrel and even a multi-sensory process, writes Tom Pattinson
Some people hear colours. Others see sounds. A handful even taste numbers. This rare neurological phenomenon is called synaesthesia, where the boundaries between senses blur. Wassily Kandinsky painted symphonies, Pharrell Williams says a chord progression looks like a rainbow, and Billy Joel composes with colour palettes in his head. For Fettercairn’s whisky maker Gregg Glass, synaesthesia means he tastes in colour.
At the launch of Fettercairn’s new Vanguard Series, guests were invited to see, hear and even paint the whisky the way Glass does.
The venue was London’s Outernet, a futuristic chamber of wraparound screens and immersive sound. After the sensory assault of the atrium, guests were led into a hidden room, asked to don blindfolds and taste in darkness. Stripped of sight, other senses came alive. Flavours sharpened. Shapes and textures emerged in the mind. Then, still blindfolded, came the music.
The piece was Lorica Pink, specially commissioned by Fettercairn’s head of brand Thom Watt and written by Kathryn Joseph and Mogwai’s Barry Burns. It was the first time the two musicians had collaborated, guided by Glass’s sketches and his descriptions of how whisky reveals itself to him in colour and form.
“I loved working with Barry on this,” Joseph explained. “It felt very quickly like all the elements of this made sense to me. How Gregg sees and hears the colours of the tastes.”
Burns agreed: “The opportunity to work with Gregg and the Fettercairn team felt like a genuine collaboration. We had a lot of fun taking inspiration from the colours and shapes of the tasting notes.”
Watercolours and brushes were handed out so guests could paint the impressions the whisky gave them. Using senses beyond the obvious smell and taste, we were encourage to ‘taste’ in colour and sound.
And at the centre of it all were the two new releases: Vanguard 1st Release and Vanguard Rare 29 Year Old.
“The idea of Vanguard,” explains Fettercairn’s International Malts Specialist Andy Lennie, “is about people who explore, they discover and they push the boundaries of what’s possible. That’s what we wanted this series to stand for.”
International Malts Specialist Andy Lennie
The Vanguard 1st Release is exactly that: an original, boundary-pushing whisky rooted in Fettercairn’s innovative Scottish Oak programme. “What we’ve done here,” Lennie explained, “is utilise some very local, naturally wind-felled Scottish oak trees. In collaboration with the Speyside Cooperage, we turned some of that oak into cask ends. So these cask ends bookend American oak staves to create 200-litre hybrid barrels. You’ve got the American oak staves, and then the medium and heavily toasted Scottish oak cask ends. These offer a unique maturation environment tailored to enhance the natural beauty of the Fettercairn spirit.”
The story of the liquid itself stretches back to 28 February 2008, when first-fill American oak ex-bourbon barrels were filled in Warehouses One and Two. For 14 years the whisky rested there, before being reracked into the experimental hybrid casks for a further two years. Once matured to 16 years, the parcel was married with some eight-year-old ex-bourbon Fettercairn spirit.
“We wanted to be completely transparent about that,” Lennie said. “The idea of bringing in the eight-year-old was all about house style. If you smell Fettercairn new make, it’s all tropical fruits – bright, fresh and very fruity. By blending in some of that younger parcel, you lift the vibrancy. And then when you introduce the hybrid casks, it’s a subtle influence of Scottish oak. With the medium and heavy toasting, you get spice, chocolate, coffee notes coming through.”
The whisky itself is a study in balance and contrast. The nose bursts with pineapple, mango, lime zest and green apple. The palate spreads into grilled tropical fruit and caramelised sugars, before warming into cinnamon, nutmeg and a hint of dark chocolate. Toasted oak runs quietly underneath, adding richness without dominating. The finish lingers with dry spice and glowing fruit. It is sunny and playful, yet layered with complexity – a whisky that feels painted in bright yellows and deep ambers.
Vanguard Rare 29 Year Old (left) and The Vanguard 1st Release (right)
If the 1st Release is a celebration of innovation, the Vanguard Rare 29 Year Old is theatre. Only 99 bottles exist, and its story begins in December 1995, when spirit was laid into a refill hogshead in Warehouse Two. After 25 years, it was transferred into a single French pink oak cask – the Ascencia barrel, developed in Bordeaux for wine.
Pink oak is a rarity. It owes its hue to high levels of carotenoids in the wood, which over years of seasoning, toasting and oxidation transform into norisoprenoids. These compounds add perfumed aromatics – florals, fruits, even a distinct strawberry note.
For Fettercairn, this was more than chemistry. It was a nod to place. The distillery sits in a region known as the Garden of Scotland, where summer fields brim with strawberries and soft fruits. “We asked ourselves,” said Lennie, “how could we inject some of those strawberry characteristics into a whisky in a unique and interesting way?”
So when the chance came to season a pink oak barrel with mature Fettercairn, it felt like fate. After four more years resting in Warehouse Two, the whisky was bottled at 29 years old.
The result is astonishing. On the nose, ripe pineapple and mango are intertwined with strawberries, vanilla cream and blossoms. The palate is silken, carrying tropical fruit into strawberry compote with hints of rosewater, soft spice and sugared almonds. The finish is elegant, perfumed and endless, leaving the impression of fruit salad dusted with sugar and a whisper of flowers. It is both old and youthful, refined and exuberant, painted in reds and golds with a brush dipped in sunlight.
Guests emerged from Outernet and carried on across the road to Dram Bar, where the conversation flowed into cocktails and late pours. But the impressions of the evening lingered longer than the drinks themselves. The Vanguard Series had been presented not just as whisky, but as music, painting, memory and place.
Gregg Glass’s synaesthesia had been refracted through cask innovation, through musicianship, through colour and flavour. And in the end, that was the point. Vanguard is about seeing whisky differently, about stepping into new territory and letting the senses cross wires.
You don’t just drink these whiskies. You hear them, you see them, you taste them in colour.
Fettercairn Vanguard 1st Release is available here from £100
Fettercairn Vanguard 29 Year Old is available here from £2,500
