“Picked up 5 casks of Bladnoch today at Blackgrange near Stirling. Not the most cost effective way if you put much value on your time but I had bought them quite a while ago and they were incurring rental charges. It was a nice day and unusually for me, I was happy to have a wee drive and I also wanted to see what must be Diageo’s largest warehouses.
When you enter these warehouse complexes you stop at the gatehouse and read the instruction sheet and sign that you’ve read it, leave your mobile phone and put on a high vis vest. You are given a road layout map…. a large grid pattern of warehouses and roads that seem as wide as motorways. If there are no workmen in sight at the warehouse you’re uplifting from, each warehouse has an outside wall telephone and you can phone the gatehouse and they send a forklift truck operator. These are racked warehouses and the casks are racked 10 or 11 high, a lot of alcohol and a lot of angels share floating around and certainly Diageo gives the impression of being well run and very security conscious. They use a sort of bar-code reader to identify casks being dispatched off the premises and this is entered on to the computer at the end of each day. I was interested in these instruments, apparently they cost about £4,500. Apparently they have to be very low voltage to avoid sparks, but you obviously need the very expensive computers that accompany them. You can see why they don’t permit photography, if Diageo is paying out considerable sums to prevent it’s own staff causing potential accidents, they are certainly not going to allow any member of the public, (or white-van men like me) to take photos.

Interestingly, as with the entire industry, there has been a considerable slow down in warehouse removals during the last 6 months. They usually are working flat out and have between 60 and 80 part time staff all of whose jobs have gone now.
The very friendly lady at the security gatehouse has a holiday caravan at Creetown (pronounced Creeton) near Bladnoch, so has promised she’s going to drop in and visit us one of these days. It’s always wise to keep in friendly terms with the key work force and that’s not always the boss.

It was a lovely warm day here in S.W.Scotland and we stopped at the seafront at Girvan for a bacon roll and a cup of tea. The recent heavy seas have deposited long rows of seaweed about two foot high which gave it a real seaside smell. Looking out to sea at Ailsa Craig, the extinct volcano which is known as Paddy’s Milestone because it’s a prominent obstacle in the sea between Ireland and Glasgow … really beautiful and relaxing”.                                                                     

To our many friends all over the world we would like to say “Thank You” for your continued support of The Spirit of the Lowlands. 

BLADNOCH DISTILLERY

BLADNOCH, WIGTOWN, DG8 9AB, 01988 402605

www.bladnoch.co.uk   or  bladnoch@talktalk.net

Not a hint of either the years of distillation or bottling other than the 25yo age statement, however despite these mysteries it does not disappoint. On the nose there is Demerara sugar inter mingled with oak, spice and furniture polish. There isn’t a hint of an off note. What a cracker! The taste reveals sweet wine, sherry, raisins, fruit cake and toffee with perhaps the ever slightest hint of smoke? There are also pleasant wood notes; saw dust, cedar and fragrant pine. The finish is very dry and long with a continuation of all of the above however dryness is predominate and once again there are an absence of off notes. A pleasure. Malt at the very end after a number of minutes, a nice surprise.

Priced at C$125 and worth every penny.

Score: 88 Points

Yes! On Friday it’s off to the Spirit if Toronto host by Johanna and Charles http://www.spiritoftoronto.ca/ Details to follow early next week!

Drinkers order Whisky Galore island’s entire stocks … five years too early

Published Date: 04 May 2009 The Scotsman http://www.scotsman.com

By SHÂN ROSS

NOT a brick has been laid to build the first distillery on the island where Whisky Galore! was filmed – but connoisseurs have already signed up to reserve the entire batch of its first-year casks. Peter Brown will begin building the distillery on Barra in the autumn. The distillery, costing more than £1 million, will make about 5,000 gallons of Isle of Barra Single Malt Whisky a year using water from Loch Uisge, the island’s highest loch. It will use barley grown by crofters on the island before being milled and malted locally and be bottled at the distillery in Borve.  Whisky needs to be matured for three years before it can legally be called whisky so the distillery will not have its first consignment until 2014.

In the meantime Mr Brown has taken orders for the £1,000 oak casks from individuals and groups of friends from countries including Germany, Japan and Sweden, and the rest of the UK. More than half the casks will be retained by the distillery but he is already selling his public quota of second-year reserve. Mr Brown said it was impossible to tell at this stage what the whisky would taste like but that it was “unlikely to be excessively peaty”. He said it would sell at about £30 a bottle at current prices at the premium end of market. Mr Brown, who ran a courier company in Edinburgh before moving to Barra 12 years ago, said: “The whisky will be of the island, from the island. It will be a reinforcement of the Highlands and Islands tradition of 200 or 300 years ago when there was scarce an island or glen that did not have its own cottage distillery. “The essence of this is to create something going back to what we had in Scotland before the Customs and Excise shut it all down. We will not be like a call centre turning up with computers which can then be closed down as quickly as it opened.”Mr Brown added that the Whisky Galore! “legend” would be a great advantage.“There is a lot of ‘Brigadoon’ sentiment in the film but it is sufficiently rooted in some kind of fact to give it meaning. It is hugely helpful because people have an automatic association between whisky and Barra.”

Whisky experts say Mr Brown’s venture is part of a wider expansion trend in Scotland over the past two years to meet demand from new markets including India, Brazil, China, Russia and south east Asia. Other new distilleries currently planned include those at Annandale in Dumfriesshire, Huntly in Aberdeenshire, and Falkirk. Major new malt whisky distilleries have also recently opened at Roseisle near Elgin and Ailsa Bay in Girvan.Annual exports are worth £3 billion to the UK economy.

A spokesman for the Scotch Whisky Association said: “The developments on Barra are part of a wider, encouraging trend in the whisky industry, with investment in new, and the expansion of old, distilleries supported by the growth of demand. “There is optimism about Scotch whisky’s future prospects despite the current economic conditions.” Alasdair Allan, SNP MSP for the Western Isles, said: “I’m delighted with this progress with the Barra distillery plan and wish the venture every success.“You only need to look at Islay to see how important economically whisky can be for an island.“Barra’s many connections with the novel and film Whisky Galore! can also be exploited.

“There is no reason why the Outer Hebrides with its pristine environment and abundant peat should not benefit from such developments.”

Festival to celebrate spirited tale of salvage

BARRA became associated with whisky after Sir Compton Mackenzie’s 1947 novel Whisky Galore! was turned into a classic Ealing comedy.Mackenzie’s novel immortalised the true events of 5 February, 1941, when the SS Politician, sailing to New York, foundered on rocks in the nearby Sound of Eriskay. About 264,000 bottles of whisky among her cargo were lost, leading to a salvage operation by islanders, who hid a large number of the bottles before excise men arrived.

In 1949, film director Alexander Mackendrick brought a film crew to Barra and many local people appeared as extras alongside the stars of the day – Basil Radford, Joan Greenwood, Bruce Seton and Gordon Jackson.The novel and film centred on the salvage operation and how the local policeman was persuaded to turn a blind eye and thwart the efforts of the Home Guard to stop the salvaging and search the island for bottles. The island is holding its first Whisky Galore! Festival on 18-20 September as part of the Homecoming celebrations. The programme includes screenings of the film, ceilidhs and film location tours. The Craigard Hotel, in Castlebay, where some of the scenes in Whisky Galore! were filmed, has a bottle from the SS Politician in a case in its bar. In December 2008, a bottle of Ballantine Scotch Whisky salvaged from the SS Politician sold at auction for £2,200.

• For details of the Whisky Galore! Festival, tel: 07971 518571, http://www.whiskygalorefestival.com

Episode 198 is now available at http://whiskycast.com/ starting with the news that Highland Park 21 now has the the title of World’s Best Singe Malt in this year’s World Whisky Awards………………

The Spring Bottling List from the Scotch Malt Whisky Society of America is now online at http://www.smwsa.com/members/BottlingList.pdf 

The Spring Newsletter is also available at http://www.smwsa.com/members/smws-newsletter.pdf

The American branch of the Society has also launched a new website;

“We are proud to announce the launch of our official

website for The Single Malt & Scotch Whisky Extravaganza.

A complete tour schedule, tasting expressions,

photos captured at the events and much more information

can be found on this site. The website also provides

the opportunity to purchase tickets online and is

a good means for new and potential attendees to become

more acquainted with the tour and all the excitement

that takes place.”

Visit  http://www.singlemaltextravaganza.com/ for complete details….

From our friend Ian Buxton of Classic Expressions;

Dear Supporter,

First of all, thanks for your support of Classic Expressions; it’s much appreciated.  For those of you who have reserved a copy of Nettleton, it is coming soon.  Real progress is being made.

I’m writing this quick email just to make you aware of a new title we’ve published.  Beer Hunter, Whisky Chaser is not a limited edition facsimile, rather it’s a volume of exciting new writing on beer and whisky to honour Michael Jackson.

It’s available now from our website at £12.99 + p&p and all publishing profits will go to help the Parkinson’s Disease Society of the UK.

I’m not going to bang on about it.  Just check it out at www.classicexpressions.co.uk/cart.cgi?action=search&pageid=34

Thanks.

 Ian Buxton

Singleton of Glendullan 12yo (40%, OB, 750ml, 2008)

There are several versions of the Singleton; Glen Ord in the Far East (initially Taiwan & Korea), the Singleton of Dufftown in the UK and the Singleton of Glendullan in the USA. The bottle is a greenish blue and is 50% wider than a normal bottle and is flask shaped; thus it stands out quite remarkably on the shelf. Clever.  Now to the actual single malt; spicy wood notes nicely mingled with cereal, heather, vanilla, tea and pine on the nose. Very well balanced and happily lacking any off notes. The taste reveals some more wood notes with a surprising follow of warming smoke and after a minute of contemplation some vivid malt and sweetness. A second taste brings forth the sherry heritage as promised on the label (& bourbon casks too, evidently). The finish is slightly oily with malt, fruit and spicy wood notes.

 A bargain at US$50

 Score: 82 Points

The Victoria Highland Games Association will be hosting a Whisky School at the 72 Victoria Highland Games May 16th and 17th 2009 at Topaz Park in Victoria, British Columbia Canada.

Two classes will be held each day; the first will feature the Classic Malts of Scotland (Diageo) led by famed retired distiller Mike Nicolson (who managed some of the distilleries being sampled in the class). The second class of the day will be led by Nigel Drever and will feature the whiskies of Morrison-Bowmore Distillers.

Additionally your ticket to the Whisky School includes a one day entry to the Highland Games.

To purchase tickets please visit the Victoria Highland Games website at www.victoriahighlandgames.com