Dramming the whisky lore for Burns Night
Robert Burns had a close and convoluted relationship with Scotland's national drink. He personified it in verse as 'John Barleycorn', and extolled it for inspiring Dutch courage: 'Wi' usquabae [whisky], we'll face the devil!' But in his day job (because then as now, poetry didn't pay) he was an exciseman. These were among the most hated figures of the era, charged with collecting the swingeing duties that meant that most distillation was surreptitious and illegal. Burns' own excessive love of the spirit may have spurred him on to an early grave, at the age of 37. Falling asleep in the snow after a night of overindulgence certainly didn't help.
Next Wednesday 25th marks Burns Night. If you want to raise a dram to the memory of the Scottish bard, look no further than our shelves of single cask malt whiskies: these are the top cut of the whisky world. A single malt means a malt whisky exclusively from one distillery, as opposed to a one blended from the production of various distilleries. A single cask malt is another step up, not only from one distillery, but from one cask only. As each cask will always be a bit different from its neighbour and will produce only a few hundred bottles these are an extremely individual take on whisky.
Unlike wine, whisky doesn't change (much) in the bottle, but it changes a lot in the cask before it is bottled; we measure the age of a whisky by the time it has spent in cask. Burns' song My Love She's But a Lassie Yet is a lament over whisky being bottled too young. There's actually a lot to recommend a well-made young whisky in terms of power, but age can bring a haunting complexity. Age also (sadly) correlates with price; you aren't just paying for years of storage, but also the proportion of whisky ('the angels' share') that has evaporated over the years from the slightly porous barrel.
A few favourites…
Linkwood: Speyside is the heart of Scottish distilling country, and Linkwood goes all the way back to the time when distillation was still technically illegal. This is a complex bottling, but the overriding note brings to mind the resiny smell of rain in a pine wood.
Glenburgie (12 year old): full bodied and sweet, with citrus top notes, this classic sweet Speyside whisky smells to me like a lemon drizzle cake. Glenburgie distillery is near Forres, where Macbeth met the witches. Be enchanted.
Glen Ord: from the Black Isle in Scotland's far north. Starts sweet, like key lime pie, but then turns minty and floral, before finishing on grassy notes disturbed by a sea breeze. The distillery is not far from the shoreline, and it shows.
Auchroisk: hard to find, hard to pronounce ('Orth-rusk'), and mainly bottled under a different name (Singleton), the distillery Auchroisk is a bit of a secret. But this 26-year-old is a true meditation malt, complex and refined. Think spice and citrus, coffee and beeswax.
Oh, and don't forget to add a splash of water. These whiskies are cask strength and need to be diluted a bit. They love it - it will bring out their aromatics. /NT
To place an order, click on the whisky name below, reply to this email, or call 020 7638 5998
