The Macallan is a lovely whisky given oodles of flavour from the sherry casks it rests its 10/20/etc years in before being bottled. The plant is not huge and you can only take the tour by booking ahead, they do not support huge coachloads of tourists who are merely making the tour because thats what you do in Scotland.
<sarcasm>I am a much better class of tourist. </sarcasm>
What I meant to say without sounding like a toal gimboid is that having sampled quite a few whiskys in my time, The Macallan is one of my favourites and seeing where all of this magnificent tipple is made was great fun.
Theres on overiding air around the Valley where its located, I think at last count there were 12 distilleries operating in this area so the atmosphere of the entire valley is rich with the smell of malt. It kind of smells like horlicks, which is a fairly pleasent thing to smell of compared to pig stys or chicken runs.
The Malt from Barley is turned into raw alchol in a process I find fascinating but I will spare you the details here. This raw alchol is put inside barrels that have contained Sherry or bourbon for a couple of years and the wood is rich with that captured scent. So over the 10 or more years that they're kept in the sheds the raw spirt takes on the flavours in the barrel and becomes whiskey. They then blend a couple of different barrels together to get the whiskey you buy in bottles.
Its a fascinating place because of this strange time siuation. They have 5 days of frantic to-ing and fro-ing of mixes and heating and distillation and then the process halts for TEN YEARS before anything else happens!
Anyway after the tour we paid for a tasting session (they call it a nosing) tutored by the lady that had taken us on the tour.
It was interesting and the whiskeys were delcious, if you like whisky of course.
But the difference I foudn in between the differing whiskys were quite marginal considering the last bottle we had a dram from bost over £200!
I really enjoyed it though and my favourite wasn't the oldest and most expensive (shock horror) it had matured for 15 years rather than 25. Which just goes to show with whisky as with life, ones age doesn't automatically equate to ones worth.
After that we had dinner in a place called the Mash Tun, which was nice and modern in the resturant but the loos were like something out of a 1980's boarding school nightmare. Or as one of my companions said " They're like the loos in the nightclub in Ruthin."
Anyways, from there we hit a smokehouse owned by the lead singer from Jethro Tull, and no he wasn't there pipeing music over the smoky fish to give them that Cod-metal flavour.
It was a stange place though because you could look in at what was happening and bascially you were looking out over about 20 people working on a factory line which was fine until they started looking back.
It must be like being one of the monkeys at the zoo
"Yes? How may I help you exactly? Can you not see I'm busy eating/picking fleas from my brothers coat/swinging on this tyre?"
After that we headed back to Aviemore to the butchers in the middle of town where, in spite of me only being here for a week they already know me and we had a good laugh with them whislst picking up a steak pie and various other bits for dinner.
Theres no TV and no mobile reception here at the cottage. I have to go outside to the road and hold my phone aloft to send these little missives. Anyone driving past must think I'm praying to some strange God. Luckily we have few people on this road. But no Tv gives you the time to read and think and write and Ithink I'm going to insist upon it for any future holidays. It really gives you the feeling of having been away.
I did miss the American election which I normally would have pulled an all nighter on (I'm strange like that). I caught the bug in 2000 as I was working for CNN when the election happened. When Gore eventually conceeded 2 weeks later there was a great wailing and Gnashing of teeth at CNN centre. We knew what would happen with that Fuck-nut in charge. Sorry for swearing but I still have strong feelings about 2000.
However The 'good guy' won this time. I'm glad america has mobilised to vote in a new face and hopefully some new policies. This man has Jay-Z on his i-pod for Gods sake! McCain thinks I-pods are from "Invasion of the body Snatchers" .
That is a bit unfair though, of all the republican Politicans I have to say McCain is a voice of reason in a party near tearing itself in two.
His run upto the nomination was a fair and well thought out strategy and remarkably free of dirty politics.
After he got the nod and the party realied behind him I think he was forced into saying and doing certain things by the party managers that he wasn't comfortable with. Just look at Palin. He didn't want her, He wanted someone with policies with experience not some weird abberation of a pol, this half-baked Alaskan.
People are already talking about Palin 2012! That, my friends will never happen.
Wow.
I ramble a lot don't I?
Anyways, the house is waking now. I've got no firm ideas on what I'm doing today but I think Em and I are going to head off and do our own thing and then meet up with the guys for a chippy supper.
Deep fried haggis! Bring it!
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