A Worm Tub Is Not a Footnote
There are fewer than a dozen distilleries in Scotland still using worm tubs instead of shell-and-tube condensers. That's not trivia. It's a production variable that materially affects the copper contact time during condensation, which in turn affects the weight and sulfury character of the new make spirit. A database of distilleries that doesn't flag worm tub use is a database built by someone who treats spirit character as a retail description rather than a production outcome.
The Distillery template in Memento handles this correctly. Worm Tub is a boolean field. It's either true or false. When you want to filter your 130-entry distillery database for production variables associated with heavier, meatier expressions, you start there.
The Anatomy of a Complete Distillery Record
The SMWS field carries the Scotch Malt Whisky Society code for that distillery — the two-digit (sometimes three-digit with decimal) identifier used on all independent society bottlings. Bunnahabhain is 10. Mortlach is 76. Glen Grant is 9. Anyone who trades bottlings or hunts SMWS releases needs this code accessible from the distillery record, not cross-referenced in a separate lookup. The field hint simply says "Code," but what it represents is a direct link to a secondary market and an independent bottling program that may be the only source of age-stated expressions from a given producer.
The Still description and Still shape fields work in tandem. Still shape stores an image — a photograph or diagram of the wash and spirit still geometry for that distillery. Still description carries the text characterization: lantern-shaped, boil ball, straight-neck, descending lyne arm angle, reflux behavior. Glenfarclas runs tall, broad-shouldered wash stills that favor light fruitiness. Mortlach runs mismatched stills with a 2.81 partial triple-distillation protocol that's unlike anything else in Speyside. You cannot understand a Mortlach expression without understanding the still geometry. Both fields together give you the complete picture.
WF and RM ratings are the two most referenced independent distillery rating systems used by serious collectors and buyers — Whisky Fun and Ralfy/Ralph Mitchell's scores. Storing both at the distillery level, rather than at the bottle level, gives a structural baseline for the producer's output quality before individual expression variation enters the picture. Production capacity records the annual litres of pure alcohol output. Founded anchors the production heritage. Ownership tracks current corporate parent — relevant because production philosophy often shifts under new ownership, and knowing that a distillery changed hands in 2015 explains character changes in expressions from 2018 onward.
Looking Up Glenallachie at a Bottling Fair, Fast
You're at a whisky fair, standing in front of an independent bottler's table. There's a single cask Glenallachie from 2009, fourteen years old, cask strength. The ask is significant. You want to know: what's the WF and RM distillery baseline, is it still-active or silent, who owns it currently, what's the SMWS code, and does the still geometry favor the light fruity profile the bottler's tasting note is claiming?
You open the record. Glenallachie, founded 1967, Speyside. Still running, not silent, not grain, not international. SMWS 108. WF rating 86. RM rating solid. Owned by Billy Walker's team since 2017. Still shape image shows relatively tall wash stills — consistent with cleaner, lighter-fruited spirit. The tasting note isn't implausible.
That lookup takes fifteen seconds. What it replaces is either a reliable memory across 140-plus active distilleries, which nobody actually has in accurate form, or standing at the table pretending to consider while you search across three separate apps and a website.