Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
lawns, topiary, ornamental curling pond (what?) and an enormous great black chimney
sticking up at the back that looks like a super-gun barrel (the original idea was to make
it look like a giant whisky bottle, which would have been even more insane). Brilliant
building, and nicely matched outbuildings. Why this place doesn't have a Visitor Centre
and tours is beyond me. The whisky itself has been criticised as being too metallic, though
the 15-year-old I tracked down seemed all right to me; moderately voluptuous, in fact.
The Chivas Brothers' Allt-A-Bhainne (1975) reminds me of a Catholic seminary for
some reason; severe and inward looking, but elegant. I haven't tracked down a single malt
from it yet.
Auchroisk distillery (1974) is quite beautiful in a modernist kind of way, all steep
roofs and interesting angles. There's a slightly gratuitous-looking sort of ground-floor tur-
rety thing that I'm not so sure about but otherwise visually it's a peach. This is where
The Singleton is produced; a very pleasant, smooth, medium-bodied dram, like an allsort
that's been briefly dipped in sherry.
I was kind of hoping to find a genuine undiscovered gem in amongst the folds and
rolls of Speyside, a hugely flavoursome shy beauty that hardly anybody has heard of, but
it was not to be; the stand-out whiskies, on taste, aroma, feel and general all-round won-
derfulness were ones that any malt drinker will know well. I have yet to find any Speyside
whisky that is less than drinkable and perfectly pleasant, but of all the drams we tasted
during that first week on Speyside, two of the best came from Glenlivet and Glenfiddich,
and one of them produced an expression that went instantly into my personal top ten.
Another exceptional pair were Aberlour and Balvenie, which may not be exactly house-
hold names but they're hardly unknowns either.
It's hard to overemphasise how important Glenlivet was not long ago, not just as a
whisky but as a defining standard, even as a region. The primacy of the whisky itself re-
mains, but its nomenclative dominance has gone, and probably just as well for all con-
cerned. One of the topics I picked up second-hand for the reading part of this topic's
research was a 1976 paperback of David Daiches' 1969
Scotch Whisky, Its Past and
Present
. Professor Daiches is one of the world's most respected and authoritative figures
on whisky, so it's interesting that in the maps at the back of the topic, there is, as usual,
one map for the whole of Scotland with the various distilleries numbered, and another
inset map showing all the Speyside distilleries of the time, except the area isn't called
Speyside, it's entitled the Glenlivet Area. If there was ever a better symbol of the import-
ance of the Glenlivet name at the time, I've yet to see it.
Not so long ago you could go into a bar which had a lot of whiskies, ask for a Glen-
livet and something like this would happen:
