Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
There was a point where we wanted to change something and I couldn't think quite
how to do it or didn't think the offending bit needed changing in the first place, so James
sat staring at the manuscript trying to work out how he would suggest redoing the relev-
ant words. Released from concentrating on the topic, my gaze fell on the bottle sitting on
the far edge of the table, near the wall. Maybe the light was falling on it in just such a way
as to make the chicanery obvious - I don't know - but for whatever reason, I looked more
and more closely at the '40' bit of the '40 years old' legend on the bottle's label. I picked
the bottle up, I squinted at it while James mulled over whatever he was mulling over and
then I said, 'James, this isn't a bottle of 40-year-old at all. It's a bottle of 10-year-old
which some devious cheapskate scumbag has altered by adding a sort of small upside-
down “7” shape to the “1” to make it look like a “4”. With a thin black marker pen, by
the look of it.' I held the bottle up to the light. 'See?'
James's eyes widened alarmingly as he stared at it. Eventually he said, '
Bastard!
'
The point is, until that point we really had thought that what we were drinking was
something above and beyond your normal 10-year old Laphroaig. Just thinking it was old
and rare and special had helped make it so in our minds. Either our noses weren't up to
the job in the first place, or our brains were ignoring what our noses were telling us. Eith-
er way, a humbling, salutary experience. I never liked to ask whether James mentioned all
this to whatever so-called friend had set out to hoodwink him, but I think a stern talking-
to would have been in order.
However. To the Macallan distillery, back on Speyside, overlooking the river itself
from a ridge on the north-west bank a mile or so from Craigellachie. The photogenic bit
that you see on the cartons is Easter Elchies house, which - along with a long, low, taste-
fully executed extension alongside - houses offices and doubles as a corporate entertain-
ment venue. The distillery itself is to the right as you approach it down the drive. The
Visitor Centre is to the left and is quite new, with lots of pale wood furniture in inter-
estingly sculpted, organic-looking shapes. We're booked in for the extended tour, which
features a range of whiskies to taste at the end in a special tasting room next to the pro-
fessional tasters' facility, but first there's the usual walk round the plant, notable for the
proliferation of relatively small stills in a big, wide-windowed space which feels oddly
like a ship's engine room ('oddly' because ships' engine rooms are not normally notori-
ous for having enormous windows looking out to valleys in Speyside).
'We've been thinking of a plot for your next book,' one of our hosts tells me genially
as we look round.
'Really?' I say.
In the circumstances, 'Really' is Authorial for 'Oh-oh.'
'We thought, you could have a body turn up in a mash tun and your Inspector What's-
his-name would have to investigate.'
