TAIPEI TWELVE ...

We have been welcoming artists from Taiwan to The Glenfiddich Residency Programme since 2005, so the arrival of Lin Kun Ying sees him become the twelfth artist to come here from that part of the world. As in each of the previous eleven years the selection of Kun Ying was facilitated through our long standing relationship with one of Taipei’s longest established and most highly regarded independent art spaces; IT Park.

Although Kun Ying normally works as part of a collaborative team, he is looking forward working exclusively on his own ideas while in residence. Mindful of his special milestone status and the significance of the twelfth year in relation to Glenfiddich he aims to focus his single source of creativity into a project tied firmly into the process of distilling and maturation.

As with all our new arrivals Kun Ying has already undertaken an introductory tour of the distillery, seeing for himself the machinery and practices used at Glenfiddich giving him an understanding into the rhythm of production as well as getting to grips with the processes.

The special qualities of the raw ingredients we use - malted barley, yeast and pure spring water - are of particular interest Kun-ying and one of the first places he wanted to visit was the source of our water supply, the Robbie Dhu Spring up in the Conval Hills. At every stage, from mashing to cutting down the strength for final bottling, it is only water from this spring that we use in our sprit. Its special qualities coming by virtue of the fact it comes through the peat of the hillside and over granite gravel as it runs down hill.