Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Besides, some of the people in the distilleries might have read my books and, when I
make my request for a private tour, be inclined to say, No! Now, if you were that Irvine
Welsh or Ian Rankin …
Blair Athol is an extremely fruity dram, full of ginger, peach and dried fruits. It's
not overly sweet, certainly not cloying and arguably quite dry, but the fruit does kind of
leap out at you. I remember trying a Blair Athol some long time ago and being very un-
impressed, but whatever was wrong then is all right now. I stagger back to the car with
my case of clinking, clanking bottles and head out of town up a wee wet twisty road to
Edradour, Scotland's smallest distillery, nestling in the folded hills above Pitlochry.
Edradour is a little gem of a place, a sort of distillery in miniature you want to wrap up
and put under the Christmas tree. It looks just like an old farm because that's exactly what
it once was. The place is all white with red detailing, the buildings clustered around the
rushing Edradour Burn that provides the water for cooling - another stream, the Moulin
Burn, provides the water for production. When I arrive, in the middle of another heavy
shower, two guys are standing stripped to the waist in the tiny mash tun, shovelling still
steaming draff out through a waist-high window and onto the trailer of a tractor parked
outside.
The pale copper stills are tiny, at the legal limit for size. Any smaller and the Excise
people would deem them compact enough to be both portable and too easy to hide, hence
illegal. It's all so compact. It's like finding a distillery that fits into a double garage. There
are only three people working in the distillery itself - there are twice as many in the shop
and on the tour side of the operation. The tour and tasting are free, too, which seems par-
ticularly decent in such a small operation.
Edradour has a thing called a Morton (huzzah!) Refrigerator, the last still in use, cer-
tainly in the whisky industry. I'd read about this device and been looking forward to see-
ing this (which, now I think about it, makes me a bit sad, but there you are). A Morton
Cooler-Downer might be a more satisfactory name for what it is. It's a long, low, open
red-painted thing with lots of rivets, like a wide, shallow tin bath, full of sets of vanes or
baffles stretching across it. Looks like the water goes up over one baffle then down under
the next, up over the following one, and so on. Oh well, not as dramatic as I'd been hop-
ing for, but interesting enough. Used on farms to cool milk. So there.
The distillery has outdoor worm tubs, pipes gurgling and pool waters steaming as the
latest shower patters the surface. In the Visitor Centre, built in an old malt barn, there's a
good, informative little video, displays of old distillery implements and a guide to answer
questions (my guide is Elaine. When I mention I'm writing a book, she tells me the new
owner, the chap behind the Signatory brand of special bottlings, is on the premises. She
asks if I'd like to meet him. My natural shyness, which does surface occasionally, makes
me say no).
