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Whisky drinkers and tourists are often bewitched by the amber rows of malt whisky that line the shelves of Scotland’s bars, restaurants and hotels.
So proposals from one of Scotland’s smallest distilleries could be viewed by many as heresy.
Stirling Distillery, which sits under the city’s castle walls only a few miles from the site of the battle of Bannockburn, is testing whether it can sell its small batch malt whisky in aluminium, as it tries to become more sustainable and lower its carbon emissions.
Aluminium is one of the most ubiquitous materials in the food and drinks industry, holding soft drinks, baked beans, takeaway meals and chill-at-home cocktails. It is also inching its way into the alcohol trade – a few vodka and gin suppliers offer aluminium bottles.
But until now it has been shunned by whisky distillers, who heavily promote claims about tradition, provenance and aesthetics. Whisky enthusiasts who often pay upwards of £100 a bottle are also thought to be too conservative to shift.
Stirling is working with scientists at the UK’s only university department that specialises in both brewing and distillery research, at Heriot-Watt on the outskirts of Edinburgh, to test whether aluminium bottles are safe.
Kathryn Holm, the marketing director for Stirling Distillery, believes younger consumers, fewer of whom now drink alcohol, could be motivated by promises of far better green credentials.
Scottish distillers shout about their shift into renewable energy and biomass but glass remains a significant part of its carbon footprint. A full-size bottle can weigh as much as the whisky it contains.
Aluminium bottles can be 90% lighter and much thinner than glass – cutting down on shipping costs and energy, and is much more readily and easily recycled. They could be easily customised and engraved – allowing for limited edition ranges or bespoke bottles, Holm said.
Researchers at Southampton University ranked the environmental footprint of recycled aluminium against both new and recycled glass, and against plastic bottles, and found it consistently had the best environmental credentials. Virgin glass was consistently the most harmful.
“At the moment it’s quite difficult to get anyone’s head around paying £100 on a whisky and it arrives in an aluminium bottle,” Holm said. “But this could be done well, and then give people the option of sustainable packaging.
“We won’t really know what the demand is until we put it out there.”
The Isle of Harris Distillery trialled refills of its gin in aluminium several years ago; a Scottish producer called Ogilvy sells its potato vodka in aluminium flasks, and says they can be repurposed as water bottles. The French calvados maker Avallen sells its spirit in brightly wrapped paper bottles.
Prof Annie Hall and Dr Dave Ellis, of Heriot Watt’s international centre for brewing and distilling, said their testing of Stirling’s malt whisky raised several issues that merited further evaluation.
While their students could not tell the difference between whisky held in glass or aluminium with an aroma test, laboratory tests with an electron microscope found traces of aluminium had leached into the whisky, raising potential health risks. The researchers believe the lining in their test bottles was degraded by the stronger, high alcohol [49% abv] whisky they used; it has more ethanol than gin or vodka, so is more acidic.
They want to test bottles with better lining and do some longer-term testing. There is evidence contact with aluminium could change the whisky’s chemical make-up, altering its taste and mouth feel. “The big question is: is there a commercially available aluminium can that has a liner that can handle whisky-strength spirits?” Ellis said. “I don’t know the answer to that question.”
Ron MacEachran, the executive chair of Harris Distillery, said its trials of aluminium bottles for gin refills “certainly had an audience”, particularly for cyclists and campers using their distillery shop who liked the bottle’s lightness.
The firm has not yet considered aluminium for its whisky, chiefly for aesthetic and commercial reasons, but it is mulling over reintroducing it for gin. The pressure on the industry to cut its carbon footprint and respond to changing consumer tastes is significant.
“There’s definitely a sea change, a range of factors influencing behaviours, and how the Scottish whisky and spirits industry comes out at the other end is going to be very interesting to see,” he said.
