the fact the most powerful nation in the history of the planet had been taken over by a cross-eyed cretin backed by gang of drooling, mean-spirited, proto-fascist shitheads.
My bedtime reading, when I’m not looking at other books about whisky, is
Stupid White Men
, by Michael Moore. It’s good – a little tabloid with the italics and so on, perhaps, but very to the point given the current situation. In fact painfully so; I can only take it a few pages at a time before my blood starts to boil.
This is where a stiff whisky really does make all the difference. No matter how fucked-up the world may get, a good dram will make it at least slightly more bearable.
And A-flippin-men to that.
Our first proper distillery visit – doing the tour, talking to people, checking out the visitors’ shop, me assiduously taking notes – is on the Monday.
I take John to the airport and meet Oliver the Editor off the wee plane that will take John on the first leg of his long journey back south.
Oliver the Editor – Oliver Johnson – is a big, friendly, comfortable-seeming kind of guy. As well as both being writers and having a certain interest in whisky, we’ve definitely bonded over two more important, character-defining interests; curry, and maps. Oliver is a fellow cartophile. We’ve met a couple of times before. The first time was to seal the deal on the book in The Vaults, HQ of the estimable Scottish Malt Whisky Society. That’s where we started, anyway, with quite a lot of single malts. Then we took in a bar across the road where I had entirely the worst whisky I’ve ever tasted (it was some sort of home-made blend made specifically for a regular in the bar, allegedly), whereupon we ended up in the Omar Khayyam, my favourite Edinburgh restaurant.
The second time we met was a month or two later in the middle of February when we went with Martin the Photographer and a video film-maker to Dalwhinnie, to make a short promotional video for the book to be shown to the Random House sales force at the next sales conference. This also let Martin take some photographs, one of which ended up on the cover of the hardback.
Dalwhinnie was in a sense the first distillery visit of the book. (I’d been round exactly two other distilleries in my life; Highland Park in Orkney and Ardbeg on Islay.)
As an introduction to the whole business, Dalwhinnie could hardly have been bettered. We met up with some extremely helpful people from Diageo, the company that owns the place (Diageo – formerly United Distillers and Vintners – own 30 other distilleries in Scotland, giving them nearly a third of the total and making them the biggest players in the market). We were treated to some very good and extremely welcome soup on a very cold day, and given a comprehensive tour round the distillery itself and the Visitor Centre. Plus they let us clamber all over the place, taking photos from the roof and all over the grounds.
Dalwhinnie is the highest distillery in Scotland, lying at over a thousand feet above sea level. It was originally called Speyside, which is technically not as daft as it sounds given that the Spey passes about five miles due north of the distillery. It’s just that the area is so not what people mean when they talk of Speyside. I confess I hadn’t realised the Spey rises so far west and south of Speyside proper. In all the years I’ve been swinging along the road near Catlodge it had never crossed my mind that the river briefly looping around on the plain near Laggan was the glorious Spey.
As a distillery Dalwhinnie looks very proud, distinct and smart, standing on a swell of ground beyond the village, its pagoda towers rising above the surrounding trees. The day we visited there were piles of snow in the car park higher than my head, but the staff were still doing their best to make the place look presentable. Indoors there are two big onion-shaped stills and outdoors there are a couple of condensers, making use of the cool
My bedtime reading, when I’m not looking at other books about whisky, is
Stupid White Men
, by Michael Moore. It’s good – a little tabloid with the italics and so on, perhaps, but very to the point given the current situation. In fact painfully so; I can only take it a few pages at a time before my blood starts to boil.
This is where a stiff whisky really does make all the difference. No matter how fucked-up the world may get, a good dram will make it at least slightly more bearable.
And A-flippin-men to that.
Our first proper distillery visit – doing the tour, talking to people, checking out the visitors’ shop, me assiduously taking notes – is on the Monday.
I take John to the airport and meet Oliver the Editor off the wee plane that will take John on the first leg of his long journey back south.
Oliver the Editor – Oliver Johnson – is a big, friendly, comfortable-seeming kind of guy. As well as both being writers and having a certain interest in whisky, we’ve definitely bonded over two more important, character-defining interests; curry, and maps. Oliver is a fellow cartophile. We’ve met a couple of times before. The first time was to seal the deal on the book in The Vaults, HQ of the estimable Scottish Malt Whisky Society. That’s where we started, anyway, with quite a lot of single malts. Then we took in a bar across the road where I had entirely the worst whisky I’ve ever tasted (it was some sort of home-made blend made specifically for a regular in the bar, allegedly), whereupon we ended up in the Omar Khayyam, my favourite Edinburgh restaurant.
The second time we met was a month or two later in the middle of February when we went with Martin the Photographer and a video film-maker to Dalwhinnie, to make a short promotional video for the book to be shown to the Random House sales force at the next sales conference. This also let Martin take some photographs, one of which ended up on the cover of the hardback.
Dalwhinnie was in a sense the first distillery visit of the book. (I’d been round exactly two other distilleries in my life; Highland Park in Orkney and Ardbeg on Islay.)
As an introduction to the whole business, Dalwhinnie could hardly have been bettered. We met up with some extremely helpful people from Diageo, the company that owns the place (Diageo – formerly United Distillers and Vintners – own 30 other distilleries in Scotland, giving them nearly a third of the total and making them the biggest players in the market). We were treated to some very good and extremely welcome soup on a very cold day, and given a comprehensive tour round the distillery itself and the Visitor Centre. Plus they let us clamber all over the place, taking photos from the roof and all over the grounds.
Dalwhinnie is the highest distillery in Scotland, lying at over a thousand feet above sea level. It was originally called Speyside, which is technically not as daft as it sounds given that the Spey passes about five miles due north of the distillery. It’s just that the area is so not what people mean when they talk of Speyside. I confess I hadn’t realised the Spey rises so far west and south of Speyside proper. In all the years I’ve been swinging along the road near Catlodge it had never crossed my mind that the river briefly looping around on the plain near Laggan was the glorious Spey.
As a distillery Dalwhinnie looks very proud, distinct and smart, standing on a swell of ground beyond the village, its pagoda towers rising above the surrounding trees. The day we visited there were piles of snow in the car park higher than my head, but the staff were still doing their best to make the place look presentable. Indoors there are two big onion-shaped stills and outdoors there are a couple of condensers, making use of the cool
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