Mythbusters: The barley that changed whisky

Mythbusters: The barley that changed whisky

The arrival of Chevallier barley in the 19th century changed the future of whisky

Mythbusters | 13 Sep 2024 | Issue 202 | By Chris Middleton

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In the summer of 1819, the Reverend Doctor John Chevallier of Aspen Hall, near the village of Debenham, Suffolk, visited one of his tenants, labourer John Andrews. After seeing impressive heads of barley growing in his cottage garden, Chevallier requested some grains be planted at his adjoining estate. During the previous harvest season, Andrews, working as a thresher for Edward Dove at neighbouring Ulverston Hall, came home with handsome, plump seeds lodged in his boots, and planted these specimens in his garden.

 

After five years of propagation under Chevallier’s successful supervision, his field hands harvested 32 bushels per acre. This led to the commercialising of this new genetically stable variety, which quickly gained fame among English maltsters, thanks to its superior malting qualities. By 1833, a London brewery mashed Chevallier with breeding stock exported to Scotland in 1834, then across the globe in 1835 to Australia, and the US in 1838. In 1841, the British Farmer’s Magazine described Chevallier as a “complete revolution in farming districts, where formally no such thing as malting barley was thought of”.

 

The superiority of this variety was celebrated in 1867 as “one of the greatest improvements of modern times” because it excelled in cultivation, malting, and flavour. By 1880, more than 80 per cent of the malting barley grown in England was Chevallier, and it continued to be the leading variety until World War I.

 

This mutant variety from Dove’s estate came from the English Common two-row long-eared spring barley (Hordeum vulgare, ssp. vulgare var. distichon). Before Chevallier, local landraces, such as Battledore, Rathripe, and Nottingham Long-ear, were cultivated in England for beer and for distilling malt spirits to compound into gin and British brandy. Under cultivation, it had “better standing and lodging”, the highest ratio of starch content for alcohol yield, and delivered superior flavours. Its heavier, plumper, and rounder grains were more efficient for malting, and they were able to be stored longer. In the mash tun, it tasted “richer, mellower, and stronger”. As the age of Scotch whisky prospered, the industry benefited from Chevallier’s malty-biscuit aromas and taste. Chevallier proved a boon for the farmer, brewer, distiller, and drinker by enriching Scotch whisky’s flavour.

 

In the mid-1850s, Britain’s Mini Ice Age ended 400 years of poor yields where the Highlands and Hebridean Islands relied on the hardier but inferior ancient six-row barley landrace, known locally as bere or bigg. The Lowlands grew a middling Scotch barley variety commonly mashed with imported English barley, preferred by licensed distillers since the late 18th century, despite East Anglian barley costing a 25 per cent to 30 per cent premium to Scotch barley, sometimes twice as much as bere. In 1808, more English barley was imported than Scotch barley harvested. The government reported that legal distilleries depended on English, often blending it with Scotch barley, while illicit Highland distillers mashed local bere. Where English barley yielded 2.6 proof gallons a bushel, Scotch barley 2.4 and bere 2.0, Chevallier delivered more than 2.8 gallons as Scotch whisky began ascent in England and Commonwealth countries.

 

As the 20th century dawned, the Chevallier variety was superseded by legions of hybrids and new varieties that proved superior for mechanical harvesters with better lodging strength, yields, and disease resistance; many were progenies of Chevallier, such as Goldthorpe, Pioneer, and Proctor.

 

Chevallier was one of the first cereal varieties named after a person. His grandson, Lord Herbert Kitchener, continued the family legacy when he sent a rust-resistant Tibetan wheat to South Africa in 1907. Visiting Nairobi in 1910, he discovered that the wheat sent to South Africa had been crossed with local Kenyan varieties to sport the newly named Kitchener wheat. A year later, Kitchener was planted in Canada, joining Canada’s expanding wheat and rye-based whisky industry, while his grandfather’s variety was relegated to the history books.

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