Phenols added to whisky..

[Timp]

I happened to go on a distillery tour last year where the tour guide, who had previously worked at a Diageo owned distillery, casually lobbed into her spiel, that the peat flavour in whisky was added/injected to the malt. I didn't really pick up on this at the time to question her but have been perplexed by this ever since. I had always been under the impression that peat itself was used, as the burning releases the necessary peating levels needed for each batch of malt. Do some maltings add artificial/possibly naturally derived phenols from peat, rather than burn?

Now, try as I might to find out about this process and indeed whether this addition the tour guide referred to is in fact a more complicated version of adding extracts of phenols to malt or is it also added at the pre bottling stage to make things more interesting, I can't find anything out.

Have any of you knowledgeable people here heard anything about this? Particularly if phenols as a flavour compound could be upped at the end of the maturation process..

[jcarrick]

Peat is ONLY used to dry to dry the barley, this malted barley is where the phenols in your whisky come from. I believe a whisky can pick up a very very small phenol content from the wood.

The only thing that is permitted to be added to any Scotch whisky at the end of maturation is water and e150a caramel colouring.

[Acksboy]

First I've heard of it. With all the attention being garnered from chill filtration and added caramel I would imagine this would be the kind of thing that whisky purists would be bringing up if it were true! Had the tour guide been at the whisky fumes?

[Andy M]

Some tour guides knowledge isn't always great and some are not great at explaining the process of whisky production. As jcarrick says peat is used to dry the barley and this is where the phenols come from, they definitely don't add them later.

[Timp]

Thanks for the replies.. Never thought I was onto the next great whisky myth just concerned about what potentially is feasible. Glad no one else' has heard this.. cheers..