As The Glendronach celebrates its 200th anniversary, the distillery’s master blender explains the science and artistry behind its oldest whisky.

Dr Rachel Barrie trained as a dancer and musician before her studies in chemistry led her to the world of whisky. After finding a mentor in the late Dr Jim Swan – who she describes as ‘the Einstein of whisky’ – Barrie began to develop a strong perspective on the craft of blending and what it takes to make great single malts.

“What I learned then was to look deep into nature, to look deep into science, to look deep into humanity, and then make the best judgement as to what people are going to love,” she explains to The Spirits Business.

Barrie subsequently made her mark at distilleries including Bowmore and Glenmorangie before arriving at The Glendronach in 2017. Having grown up in Aberdeenshire, she says of this appointment: “It was like coming home for me.”

“I’m from nearby Glendronach, so I always knew it. For me it’s the character of Aberdeenshire in its truest form, a stoic backbone and strength. I would describe it as a traditional, robust Highland malt with body, but also refinement. There’s a duality to that, and I think that’s what makes it really special.”

“With that body in the spirit, we also have a vinous fruitiness that you get right off the still; there’s very expressive brambles and oranges and a chocolatey character in the new make as well as hints of leather and tobacco,” she adds.

Science meets storytelling

Barrie lapses easily into discussion of harmony and duality, contrast and depth. It’s a reminder that blending spirits at this level can be as intuitive as it is scientific. Nowhere is this more evident than the way she talks about the newly-bottled The Glendronach Aged 56 Years ‘1968 Legacy’.

“There were three 0loroso refill casks that were filled on 24 September 1968, and then in 2010 they were transferred into first-fill Pedro Ximenez hogsheads. I’ve been checking in on them, obviously, in recent years.”

Barrie was born just a few months after these casks were filled, a short distance from the distillery. So, in a sense, they’ve gone on a journey together.

“One had a stewed apple and bakery kind of character, another had chocolate and black cherry, and there was another that had an incredible nuance of ancient spices. So, I decided on that combination to create this whisky.

“I had all these layers, and that vintage, to celebrate 200 years of The Glendronach. I just felt that was the way to tell this story, and I loved the timeless symphony created from these three. All exquisite on their own, but it was a richer story when they were together.”

“I wanted to get to all of Glendronach through the centuries in one whisky. Not that that’s completely possible. But you know, as close as I could get.”

Capturing 200 years of distilling history in one bottle is no mean feat. Especially when we factor in the pressure inherent to working with casks of whisky that can never be replicated.

Differences in materials, techniques and even climate in the 1960s mean that the spirit character found in those old casks will be slightly different to what The Glendronach produces today.

“Nobody’s completely got to the bottom of it. I think it must be a complete synchronicity of so many factors. The old coal-fired stills, the old maltings in the distillery, not much peat but a kind of smouldering earthiness, then there’s brewer’s yeast, different barley varieties. There’s a myriad of elements. But having said that, I think the 56-year-old is timeless.”

A brief history of The Glendronach

The Glendronach wasn’t always a flagship single malt brand. After its founding in the 19th century by a partnership of Aberdeenshire farmers headed by entrepreneur James Allardice, it was passed between various owners until the 1960s when it came under the control of William Teacher & Sons.

For the remaining years of the 20th century, it formed the heart of Teacher’s Highland Cream blended whisky. In 1996, the site was mothballed, and for a time the future of The Glendronach was uncertain.

It was only in 2008, when it was purchased by The Benriach Distilling Company, that this old Highlander began to find its character again.

After its acquisition by Brown Forman in 2016, The Glendronach began investing heavily in the Spanish oak Sherry casks that would come to define its character. The 56-year-old has been aged in both oloroso and Pedro Ximénez (PX) casks, a combination in which Dr Barrie finds yet another point of duality and balance.

“The oloroso allowed it to develop a balanced dryness and keep that earthiness and nuttiness. Obviously, from 1968 to 2010 you’re going to get a lot of oxidation, so you get a lot of top note complexity. What the PX does is almost like a polish, it integrates, elevates and just makes it more seamless.”

“Oloroso is fragrant. It lifts the fruit, but PX gives you the raisins, the dates, and the brambles. Think about the valley of the brambles; that’s why PX works so well. It just really brings out the dark fruits.”

“When I taste it, it takes me back to my earliest memories of running through the brambles and in the fields, and the earthiness of that part of Scotland. It tells me the whole story as much as could be captured in one whisky, and that was the goal.”

Looking to the future

The Glendronach’s bicentenary is marked by a £30 million (US$40.1m) project to enhance its guest experiences, double production capacity and prepare this old distillery for its third century.

“We haven’t moved anything,” Barrie explains. “We’ve just replicated four stills and put a few more wooden washbacks in. We want to make sure the story of Glendronach is honoured and guarded, and will continue into the future.”

The Glendronach Aged 56 Years is available in an edition of 200 Glencairn Crystal decanters, presented in bespoke American walnut cabinets built by designer John Galvin, of Glasgow.

It is bottled at a natural cask strength of 44.9% ABV and offered at £35,000 (US$47,809) for 700ml.

The brand recently expanded its presence in global travel retail (GTR) with the launch of The Glendronach House Editions.

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Moving on from the ‘little’, these days Barrie Cadogan is a towering presence on the scene. A first-call collaborator for his impeccable tone and touch, and spotted on the stages of giants from John Squire to The Black Keys, our Zoom call finds him rattling around a New York hotel on a day off from his alt-blues trio’s US tour.

Indeed, the 51-year-old’s work rate and visibility is such that you might not have noticed the near-decade silence from the band that made his name. Now, though, Little Barrie are back with Gravity Freeze: a sixth album whose joyous soul-rock grooves sound like a band feeling its way back to the light after a period of deep personal trauma.

Gravity Freeze has been a long time coming. How have you evolved as a player?

This is the first Little Barrie album since 2017’s Death Express – Virgil [Howe, drummer] passed away the day before the tour, so we never toured it. I’m still infatuated with the guitar. I guess it’s just honing it, seeing where your interests go. I wanted to make this album personal, try to make music that had spirit to it.

What subjects did you write about?

I wrote the title track about sleep paralysis. When I first got it, I thought I was having a fit – it was scary. But I guess this album was documenting the things we were coming out of and processing losing Virgil.

I try not to force it, but I had a conversation with my friend Jim Jones and he said songwriting is like showing up for work. Sometimes it doesn’t happen, but you have to actually show up and be ready to receive things from the universe.

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How did these songs come to you?

Some were written coming out of Covid. A friend of mine, who’s an artist and musician, let me use his studio in East London. He had a music setup – some drums and amps, a laptop and microphones – and I’d go in and make demos. I was surrounded by all his art equipment: brushes, glue, bits of wood, plastic and metal.

He was making sculptures, developing photographic film, it was an inspiring place. I’d close the door and just kick ideas around. Sometimes I’d start off playing a terrible bit of drums to make a loop.

Do you have favourite guitar moments?

Coralisa is kind of a groove, but the outro guitar was something different for me. Luggin’ Hurt came out good; we just carried on jamming after we’d finished the arrangement and it became this kind of cool, funky boogie. More Bad Miles Of Road had a good spirit: it’s a very rhythm-section-driven song, keeping the guitar super minimal. I wanted to make a guitar-heavy record but not a stereotypical rock record.

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Where did you make the album?

We recorded it all in a tiny mixing room in Hornsey [North London]. We tipped the sofa on its side to fit the drum kit in there, and when we were getting the drums down, because we wanted a live feel, me and Lewis [Wharton, bass] played into amp simulators, so we didn’t have any spill. Then we reamped Lewis’s bass and my guitar, and then I’d do overdubs.

What amps did you use?

One we used a lot was a custom 212 combo built for me by Frank Cooke of JPF Amps. I wanted something that was voiced more British, like the mid-’60s Marshalls that ran on KT66 tubes. They have a beautiful kind of hi-fi tone, and the way they feed back is like that ‘Beano’ sound.

Then I used my ’62 brown Fender Super, a [black-panel] Bandmaster and an old copper-panel AC30. We ran all Lewis’s bass through the JPF as well, and used the AC30 on More Bad Miles Of Road because we wanted the bass to sound blown out.

You’ve never been a massive pedal fan, have you?

There’s a couple of fuzz boxes. I used the germanium Fuzz Face, the Dennis Cornell one. That’s on Luggin’ Hurt. I used a MkIV Tone Bender. But the song Wire, that’s just the trem on the Super. We threw up a bunch of mics in this small room. So sometimes we were using closer mics, and sometimes we were opening up the more ambient mics, just to see how much air we wanted in the sound.

What were the key guitars?

It varied. On More Bad Miles Of Road, I used the white custom-built guitar I had put together a while ago [made by Philippe Dubreuille]; it’s a bit like a Jazzmaster, with P-90s and a Bigsby. I used my old Casino on Coralisa and Wire.

Luggin’ Hurt was my Black Beauty Custom with that Cornell fuzz. For December, I used my ’60s Kay Red Devil – it’s got those Speed Bump pickups. On It Isn’t Soul, it’s an Esquire into a fuzzbox as I wanted it to be kind of wiry.

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What do you like about the trio format?

There’s something exciting about the minimalism. Working with the space – there’s something liberating about it. I’ve always been as much inspired by rhythm and drums as by guitar.

So I try not to approach playing rhythmically in a rock way, y’know, I don’t really fill out songs with tracks of rhythm guitar. I tend to hold out and play around the vocal. Like More Bad Miles Of Road, I’m just singing off the bass and drums.

With a trio, you learn how to pull things back because if you go out on your first song playing at full velocity, you’ve got nowhere to go. You have to learn how to leave space.

With a lot of modern production, it feels like people just fill everything out with hundreds of tracks. The confidence in the space is something that takes a while to learn. It can feel vulnerable at first, but there’s so much dynamic scope in a trio just by holding back and not always playing at full velocity or volume.

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One key thing you have to be conscious of is that not everyone wants to play at the same volume. If I work more as a sideman with other people, the volume tends to be lower. But with bands like The The, I’m playing louder than with Little Barrie.

Probably the loudest band I’ve ever played with was Primal Scream. We were using Super Leads and cranking them. Or you might need a certain effect, like when I worked with Edwyn Collins and he used the Mu-Tron, so I had to have that in the chain.

You’re a lifelong Stone Roses fan. What was it like being in John Squire’s band with Liam Gallagher?

I never could have imagined it as a kid, with Stone Roses posters Blu-Tack’d to my wall. When I played bass on that Gallagher/Squire tour, it was a lot of fun switching hats. The parts were quite riffy and melodic.

Y’know, John said he wanted that movement from the bass because it was a single-guitar band. And the way John plays, he doesn’t need a second guitarist. He’s one of those guys – he can cover it all.

The City of Barrie is receiving $180,000 in provincial funding to help local businesses expand into international markets as tariffs continue to disrupt trade between Canada and the United States.

The funding, announced by local MPPs on Friday, comes from Ontario's $40-million Trade-Impacted Communities Program (TICP), which launched last year.

It will support the Export Development Initiative, which aims to help local companies identify new markets and establish international business connections as the impact of U.S. tariffs on Canadian goods mounts.

"It means helping a neighbor. It means helping a friend. It means helping a parent, a grandparent continue to secure their job and secure our local economy," Barrie-Innisfil MPP Andrea Khanjin said.

Part of the work will include a Trade Accelerator program to be launched by Invest Barrie with the first cohort in the fall in collaboration with the Toronto Region Board of Trade, City of Orillia, and County of Simcoe.

"It will give them access to resources, expertise, there'll be mentorship that follows, and then further support as it relates to getting some market access," Stephannie Schlichter, director of Invest Barrie, told Barrie360. "We will be looking to support the facilitators and then supporting companies with getting those connection points."

The initiative will happen over two years.

Fifty per cent U.S. tariffs on Canadian exports that came into effect on Saturday morning target sectors such as dairy, alcoholic beverages, and manufactured and consumer goods (including electronics, agricultural products, and more).

Previous duties on metals, automobiles, and lumber are still in effect as well at varying rates.

As a result, diversifying clientele in international markets outside the United States will be key for many businesses moving forward.

"Part of the messaging that our companies [have] is 'where else can I take my goods where there's opportunity for me to sell?'" Stephannie Schlichter, director of Invest Barrie, told Barrie360. "This program is really designed to help them identify new targets and make the connections they need to go into those new markets and be successful."

Schlichter says businesses interested in participating will be able to apply through Invest Barrie.

The Toronto Region Board of Trade's website says that businesses looking to take part in the program must generate at least $500,000 in annual revenue or have at least $1 million in invested capital, have an established product or service with market fit, have been operating for at least two years, and be committed to dedicating time and leadership attention to export planning.

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Black Controls, an industrial automation company based in Barrie, has 29 past and present clients and projects internationally — 11 of them in the United States — on its website. The company's president, Rick Black, says U.S. tariffs are increasing the cost of some goods his company purchases from south of the borded, while Canada's retaliatory tariffs could make American customers more hesitant to purchase from Canadian companies like his.

"It's not only on the exporting or the sales side of the business," he told Barrie360. "It's also on us potentially purchasing things that we used to purchase, which now have a tariff, and that obviously has an impact on existing projects... so we're still navigating that."

Black says he's "concerned" about one specific project a year in the making for which the company purchased a piece of equipment six months ago from a Michigan-based supplier that it plans to integrate when it's shipped over later this year.

Situations like that have given Black Controls more of a push to expand international partnerships outside the United States, and it plans to make use of the Trade Accelerator program.

"We're set up and we're able to execute in other parts of the world, but in terms of actually developing business and getting sales to companies that are based there, that's where this program will help us," Black added.

"If we want to grow, given the current situation with the U.S., it is something that we need to seriously consider."

Over the weekend, Google Maps hastily amended Lake Ontario, now displaying it as ‘Lake America’ in the US, with some Canadian services making the change as well. This change arrives only days after U.S. President Donald Trump issued his executive order on the matter.

On Thursday, President Trump issued an order to rename Lake Ontario to Lake America in retaliation for Canada’s ongoing trade feud with the US. As a result, Google updated its Google Maps platform to reflect the change in official government sources, including the U.S. Geographic Names Information System (GNIS).

So, Google Maps now renders the change to Lake America for users in the US. The company moved quickly, much to the dismay of users online. This change is similar to when President Trump signed the executive order to change the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. For most Canadians, Google Maps will still show Lake Ontario when searching for one of the five Great Lakes of North America.

“These updates follow our long-standing policy for bodies of water with names that vary from country to country, and are starting to roll out now,” Google wrote in its post.

However, there are rare exceptions. Over the weekend, several websites for Canadian and Ontario entities began displaying Lake America on their maps. For instance, the Liquor Control Board of Ontario’s (LCBO’s) store locator, Hydro One’s outage map and GO Transit’s station finder all began rendering “Lake America.”

As reported by CBC, it appears as though these changes were made as an “error.” Speaking to the outlet, Hydro One states that it is “aware that Lake Ontario is being incorrectly labelled.” Metrolinx, the agency that owns GO Transit, also spoke to CBC on the matter. “We are actively reviewing our websites to make sure they all identify Lake Ontario by its correct name: Lake Ontario,” the company said.

We are aware that Lake Ontario is being incorrectly labeled on our outage map. The issue originates from a third-party mapping service. We are working with our vendor to correct the issue as quickly as possible and restore the proper geographic reference. We regret the error and…

— Hydro One (@HydroOne) August 30, 2026

Google Maps alternatives like Apple Maps and Waze have refrained from making any changes to Lake Ontario, even in the US. Although this may change under pressure from the US government, Apple and Waze have not folded to the changes in Trump’s flippant executive order.