August 2009

Nothing like a nosing at 9 in the morning. To prepare for it, Topi pours us all a shot of Dalwhinnie (“It’s a breakfast whisky”) to go along with our bacon butties. Then it’s off to the distillery.

Whisky and bacon butties for breakfast. Photo by Christine Spreiter.

Our group of whisky tasters includes several Brits who have been sailing aboard a magnificent 56-foot gaff-rigged cutter, Eda Frandsen. A tall chap, with a walrus mustache and wearing a cotton candy-colored polo shirt with the collar turned up, the way they used to do in the 80s, sniffs an 18-year-old whisky Billy has just poured us and, in a very proper British accent, says, “I’m getting dried prawn shells in the nose on this one, Billy.”

Dried prawn shells? It’s all Billy and I can do to keep from snorting this fine whisky out our nose as we try and hold back our laughter.

Is it dried prawn shells or shellacked sandalwood you be smellin'?

In a show of one-upmanship, another British noser, an old guy who looks a bit like Peter O’Toole after a long night of boozing, says, “I don’t think it’s dried prawn shells at all. More like smoked haddock, I should think.”

“Typical toff nonsense,” Billy whispers to me.

“What’s a toff?” I whisper back.

“Upper-class British arse heid,” Billy says.

The British toff, who is actually a rather well-respected whisky writer from London who shall go nameless, makes similarly ridiculous comments about various expressions of Caol Ila whisky. He finds the 12-year-old tastes of “shellacked sandalwood” and a rare cask-strength whisky to have a “lot of fruitcake taste, although now that I think of it, it’s more the smell of the mix before you actually bake the cake rather than the cake itself.”

What I want to know is this: How would anyone know what shellacked sandalwood tastes like?

If you were going to visit just one Hebridean island to taste whisky, it would have to be Islay. The place is choc-a-bloc with distilleries, all with distinctive, individual flavors. They’re tucked into hillsides and clandestinely hidden in small bays as befits their former status as once-illegal stills.

The pagoda-style roof at Lagavulin. Photo by Christine Spreiter.

Sailing up the Sound of Islay near the ruins of Dunyvaig castle, we spot the pagodas of Lagavulin Distillery. Some people say that just as St. Andrews is the spiritual home of golf, Lagavulin is the spiritual home of whisky. Just beyond that is Ardbeg, which like all the distilleries along the coast here, has whitewashed walls, a black roof, and its name in enormous letters painted in black on a seaward wall.

But we are bound for Caol Ila (Kull-EE-la), a modern distillery with ancient roots that teeters on the hilly shore like a colossal white rock on the brink of spilling into the sea. Ashore, my legs wobble, my body rocks as several of us follow the manager, Billy Stitchell, into the distillery where four massive coppery stills stand bubbling away in front of ocean-facing windows that look towards the Paps of Jura across the sound.

Photo by David Lansing.

Billy pours several of us a dram of crystal clear New Make, which is what whisky is called after it’s distilled but before its aged in oak casks. At 70% alcohol by volume, it shrivels my tongue and clears my sinuses but still shows off that unmistakable Caol Ila toffee caramel taste.

That evening I have my first shower in three days in the worker’s locker room inside the distillery. I shave at a sink by the window. The sea is calm, the sky a bruised purple, and just below me, on rocks by the distillery pier, is an otter cracking open mussels for his supper.

Perhaps it’s just a wash and a change of clothes, or maybe it’s the fine whisky I’ve enjoyed all afternoon, but a subtle change has come over me this evening: I feel content for no particular reason. Happy in the stillness of my moody surroundings. Perhaps, I muse to myself, I should come back to this island at the end of my cruise and explore it further with a car and driver.

I wonder if my Glaswegian driver, Michael, would be available?