Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
but it has a definite scent of the sea shore about it. Definitely different. I like it for its
eccentricity.
I've also picked up a bottle of Inverleven at the Whisky Shop in Antartex Village, a
16-year-old from '86, and - after stopping to take a few photos of the long red façade of
the old Argyll Motor Company factory, also in Alexandria - Inverleven distillery is the
next stop.
Bit high rise for a distillery, but all the more dramatic for that, with soaring red-brick
walls rising almost from the middle of Dumbarton, wide-stanced but with strong vertic-
als from chimneys, pipes and tall, narrow windows. It has a nicely asymmetric and yet
balanced look about it, and the way the set-back of it works, outer components leading
in towards higher, narrower units, reminds me of a castle. It's actually in quite a pleasant
situation, too, close by one small tree-filled park and across the river Leven from another,
at the point where the Leven debouches into the Clyde in the shadow of Dumbarton Rock
and its uneven straggle of twin-set fortifications.
The 16-year-old Inverleven is not quite so well built or dramatic as the place it's
made, but a very approachable dram all the same; distinctively fruity with some smoke
and peat, and dry and smooth at the same time. Chocolate Orange, was what I thought.
Last stop is Auchentoshan, just east of Old Kilpatrick, barely a mortar round's lob
from Jim and Joan's place in Dalmuir and spitting distance from what's left of this end of
the Antonine Wall. I really must get one of those clip-on GPS units for my PDA. I spend
a very frustrating half-hour or so trying to get to the distillery, going down one road that
looks like it heads straight there only to find that it doesn't, trying another that also looks
promising but then loops round without even going close and then another one again, still
without success. What makes it especially annoying is that for most of the time I can see
the damn distillery, sitting there in watery sunlight looking quite smug in a trim sort of
way. The only plus during all this tortuous maze-running is finding an interesting but de-
teriorating thirties art-deco style sports pavilion across some playing fields north of the
rail line.
I finally work out that the way to get to Auchentoshan is not through any of the
housing estates that surround it on three sides, but from the north via the main Glas-
gow-Dumbarton dual carriageway, just east of the Erskine Bridge approach road com-
plex; there's a single wire-fenced approach road leading off the westerly carriageway
straight down to the buildings by the side of the dam that holds the cooling water. Wrong
maps, again.
So, Auchentoshan. It's an unusual whisky because it's triple distilled, rather than
double. Auchentoshan's the last surviving fully triple-distilled Scotch, representing a
style that used to be much more common. Partly this reflects improvements in distilling
technology. Distilling is about reduction, about refining. Stills don't make alcohol - the
