Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
sort of home-made blend made specifically for a regular in the bar, allegedly), whereupon
we ended up in the Omar Khayyam, my favourite Edinburgh restaurant.
The second time we met was a month or two later in the middle of February when
we went with Martin the Photographer and a video film-maker to Dalwhinnie, to make a
short promotional video for the topic to be shown to the Random House sales force at the
next sales conference. This also let Martin take some photographs, one of which ended
up on the cover of the hardback.
Dalwhinnie was in a sense the first distillery visit of the topic. (I'd been round exactly
two other distilleries in my life; Highland Park in Orkney and Ardbeg on Islay.)
As an introduction to the whole business, Dalwhinnie could hardly have been
bettered. We met up with some extremely helpful people from Diageo, the company that
owns the place (Diageo - formerly United Distillers and Vintners - own 30 other distil-
leries in Scotland, giving them nearly a third of the total and making them the biggest
players in the market). We were treated to some very good and extremely welcome soup
on a very cold day, and given a comprehensive tour round the distillery itself and the Vis-
itor Centre. Plus they let us clamber all over the place, taking photos from the roof and all
over the grounds.
Dalwhinnie is the highest distillery in Scotland, lying at over a thousand feet above
sea level. It was originally called Speyside, which is technically not as daft as it sounds
given that the Spey passes about five miles due north of the distillery. It's just that the
area is so not what people mean when they talk of Speyside. I confess I hadn't realised the
Spey rises so far west and south of Speyside proper. In all the years I've been swinging
along the road near Catlodge it had never crossed my mind that the river briefly looping
around on the plain near Laggan was the glorious Spey.
As a distillery Dalwhinnie looks very proud, distinct and smart, standing on a swell of
ground beyond the village, its pagoda towers rising above the surrounding trees. The day
we visited there were piles of snow in the car park higher than my head, but the staff were
still doing their best to make the place look presentable. Indoors there are two big onion-
shaped stills and outdoors there are a couple of condensers, making use of the cool air.
They had a really neat-looking and colourful program running on their computer in the
still house, displaying and controlling all the valves, pipes and containers the raw mater-
ials for the whisky have to negotiate on their way through the process, which - computer
and remote control apart - is pretty standard whisky-tech. Traditional, in other words.
The whisky itself represents the Highlands in Diageo's Classic Malts range, so is
pretty well known these days. The 15-year-old has a light, new-mown-grass kind of smell
to it, very green and scenty. There is a hint of peat and some sweetness, but it's the dry,
herby notes that hold sway, making Dalwhinnie a light, zesty kind of dram, something
you could put in place of a fino sherry at the start of a meal, or take, diluted perhaps, in-
