Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Later, in the post-party gloaming, on the beach in front of the house, we started to un-
load the boat. I think I must have overloaded myself with, well, with whisky, obviously,
but also with two camping seats, a camping table, a cool box and my camera, because
I fell in. The water was only about a foot deep, but this was quite sufficient to ruin my
camera, drown my mobile, soak me to the skin and fill my waders. Allegedly I sort of
teetered for a second or two, which supposedly made it even funnier. Eilidh was heard
laughing from the house. She claims seeing me fall in the water is the funniest thing she's
ever seen, but then she's only fifteen, so what does she know.
The camera was eventually repaired, but the mobile was a goner. I wouldn't have
minded so much but I'd only replaced it the previous year after an unfortunately similar
incident while canoeing with Les on Loch Eilt, just up the road.
So, Loch Shiel and I have issues. But it's still a great loch.
We get the boat safely into the water, the engine starts first time and we zap down the
loch a few miles to a pebble beach and back, just to make sure everything is working.
There are maybe a dozen other boats on the loch, which is a lot, for Loch Shiel. This, it
turns out, is because it's one of the three annual Glenfinnan Fishing Competitions. Then
it's time to sit in the garden with a beer (pre-midge season; no worries). After a very fine
dinner of venison and a sensible amount of fine red wine - a Red Wine Frenzy is always
a danger on such occasions - Les and I have a couple of cask strength whiskies, just to
get into training for the week of intensive researching ahead.
Cask Strength
Drinking cask strength whisky, especially if it has only been roughly filtered, gives you
a chance to get back to something more like whisky as it used to taste. Not so long ago
there was very little whisky available at cask strength; too much of even the best whisky
had been chill-filtered, watered down and - in some cases - mixed with caramel to pro-
duce a darker colour.
None of these processes will absolutely ruin a malt, and the whisky manufacturers
would argue that in each case they were simply giving the whisky-buying public what
they wanted, but it was certainly the case that this was an imposed taste; if you wanted
your whisky without any of these processes having been applied, you had to live near a
distillery or a very good off-licence, know somebody in the trade, or resort to buying your
own cask.
I was told about the whole chill-filtering, caramel-adding thing by a guy in Caden-
head's whisky shop on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh, not long after I'd moved back to
Scotland in 1988. I'd just bought a flat on South Bridge and I was exploring the area
when I found this shop that sold nothing but whisky, much of it stuff I hadn't seen in other
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