Escaping Blackburn proved trickier than expected as the Railway station had rudely moved itself during the night. The signs pointing to where it used to be now directed one to a Mall. Complete with all the bad-mallness you'd expect. In the spirit of Fiennes I soldiered on, finding both the station and the train I required to deposit me in Preston. From Preston I headed up to Glasgow to be met by Neil. Those of you who have met Neil will understand my livers trepidation in reacquainting myself with him. But 'twas good to see him again and talk a load of bollox about music, over a couple of quite excellent beers. Spending time with Neil worries me, I find it difficult to argue music with him (we coincide too much), and our love of dark ales and whisky is worryingly close. It's not just me, Frances said the same thing. Worse was to come after we'd adjourned to the pub (a favourite of Neil's with lots of excellent ale on tap) and discovered our favourite distillery was "Edradour" (see last major scotch post). After meeting Neil's other half (apparently easy to guess who I was since I had a Marillo t-shirt on) we decided to head to the distillery the next day since it was only a 2 hour drive from Glasgow.
Having sorted out the business of the next day we settled in for a pint, or six. Ended up eating at the pub, which offered vegetarian options! Wow! The other two seemed amused by my 'wow, it's lettuce! and it's crunchy', I guess spending time in London does open your tastebuds after all ! Post beer we returned to Neil's place to sample some whisky and listen to music. Mmmm tasty. There's a picture floating around of what we sampled which I'll upload at some point. Most interesting would have been the bottle from the whisky club/society thingy that Neil belongs to.
Tuesday rolled around and we gently approached the day. Juice, water, coffee and some food took up the first hour or two of movement, and then we hit the road. The Perthshire (?) tourist road was lovely - here they value their bonnie heather, we want it destroyed. There were aspects of sadness on the trip. We were to pass Dewer's world of whisky (stop giggling Blair), which I was assured had a huge globe with 'World of Whisky' encircling it. No such luck. We also had to drive past The Famous Grouse (again, quiet Blair) and the large metal grouse outside that place. I'll be back...
Arriving at Edradour just outside of Pitlochy: it's the smallest distillery in Scotland (400L for the smaller of the two stills), is quite breathtaking. There's a small stream running through the place, and all of the buildings are lovely. I have some photo's, which again will make it up at some point. We went on the tour, which given the size of the place was predictably brief. They played a video about how they made stuff, which was soooo twee we were laughing (quietly) - even had a flute - just like the Scottish hotel owner in Little Britain. A dram of their cheap whisky was provided while we watched. Even their cheap stuff is good.
A brief chat about all the different types they make followed. They had the stuff I liked at our tasting - roughly the same price as in NZ interestingly. Except WhiskyGalore had none left. Also a large range of cask strength's finished in a range of barrels. A group of four were described as their top range.
The tour went through the distillery and ended up in the tasting room. Seeing as I was always going to buy the 13yo I decided to try three of the four of their top range stuff. First up was a Tokaji finish. Really intriguing taste to this one, very very sweet (from the wine barrel) and very young at 4yo. The complexity of the taste would have suggested a 12-18yo. Both nose and finish were also sweet with very strong overtones of honey. I'd have given it an 8.5-9.
Next up was the 24 yo port finish. In the parlance of youth, OMG. There are times you taste something and just know you have to buy it. this was one of them. It's no exaggeration to say one taste sent shivers through me. Neil was laughing until I got him to taste it. That shut him up. Quickly. It's got a lovely nose, a very very complex woody caramel taste and a finish that just wouldn't end. Had this been at the tastings we've had in Wellington it would have been a 10 (by way of comparison, the Brora's I so loved were in at 9.5). I would be buying this one.
Last up was their 22yo finished in Chateau de'Quem (sp) barrels. Massive citrus nose and taste to this (lemon in particular), a much lighter whiskey than the port (well duh!), again wonderful complexity and a long finish. Apparently that one was the hit at the Xmas party for the staff. Sadly only a 9 for that one as it had been totally overshadowed by the port finish.
As I'm sure most of you guessed, I bought the port finish. And no, you don't want to know how much and no, unless I know you know whisky, you won't be tasting it.
We got back about 6ish (bloody traffic) and had a quiet nite drinking tea (no honest, we did!) and listening to music and talking more bollox. We did finally find someone to disagree on, Leonard Cohen. I think he's great.
B xxx
1 comment:
A pleasure drinking with you sir!
For reference, the SMWS stuff was fron the now closed Glen Keith distillery and was simply known as "toffees rolled in ash". Or 81.13 to use its slightly less romantic demarkation.
And that 24yo? Enough to make you believe in God. Or at least the worth of a very large overdraft.
n
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