A whisky lunch
What better way is there to spend a Monday lunchtime - and most of the afternoon?
It has been a while. Since I’ve posted here, and since I’ve hosted a whisky lunch. All is well again now - Slàinte Mhath!
I first met Chris and Stephan at the opening of the new Scapa Distillery tasting room, the Noust, back in April. We’ve been saying we’d have a get together eversince but, for one reason or six, it took until Monday last to happen. Six months. Nothing happens quickly in Orkney. Certainly our whisky doesn't hurry in its maturation as our average annual difference in temperatures between summer and winter is only about 12C. We used to say 10, but even this far north we are warming. My favourite whisky at the Noust opening was the 19yo finished in a PX Hogshead. I bought a bottle later - it’s way outside my usual price range. A summer indulgence. I didn't share the last few drams on Monday - sorry.
So, back to lunch. Very much modelled on my Whisky Women dining back in Sussex, we enjoyed a responsible main-course pie, a kind of Spanakopita, the Greek filo pastry usually filled with spinach. Mine had spinach, but was mostly the stalks from our rainbow chard, giving a wonderfully earthy flavour that leads perfectly to a dram or six. The leaves of the chard had been burnt almost away by the salt air of Storm Babet, and so frozen spinach was added, along with garlic, toasted pine kernels and a smoked Burnside, one of Orkney’s newest and most delicious fresh cheeses.
In addition to Chris and Stephan (both in black) seated around the table were Pat Retson, a World Icon of Whisky who many of you may know from her days at Highland Park, and our friends Malc and Jill. Malc loves his whisky, cooking and flavours of all kinds. He loves experimenting. I recently gave him a selections of black peppers for his birthday and so he organised a pepper tasting, having baked them all in little crackers. It’s good to have a few activities in mind for windy Orkney days, and we have had a few just recently. Jill doesn't drink at all but has an incredible nose and just loves nosing Malc’s drams. But then Wallace and Jack Milroy, of Milroy’s of Soho, did much of their whisky discovery by nosing. And my long-suffering, non-whisky-drinking husband was in on the fun too. Someone had to be able to drive us to Winter Choir in the evening: we’re doing Handel’s Messiah in early December.
The first whiskies onto the table, to accompany the pie and what came later, were the Co-op Irresistible own-label 12yo Single Malt Scotch whisky and a Glengoyne 12yo - a good compare and contrast duo. Glengoyne has long been a favourite distillery and they have a chef working on food and whisky matchings with them, one of my fellow Food Tourism Ambassadors for Scotland Food & Drink for the two years of that scheme. Meaning the valley of the goose, Glengoyne is conveniently close to Glasgow for visiting. I swither between their 10, 12 and 15yo’s as favourites (much depends on the season), and their Teapot Dram is/was the stuff of legend. Originally a nip in the tea room for the workers until the twin gods of Health & Safety (quite wisely) intervened, I was introduced to the Teapot dram by the wonderful Geraldine Murphy of The Pot Still pub in Glasgow.
I had found the Co-op Irresistible 12yo through an article about best budget single malt Scotch whiskies in the Good Housekeeping magazine. I’m not a regular reader, and I was surprised and delighted to see the article. I picked up on the Co-op dram as being the best whisky for food pairing, a title that I award in my mind to the local Scapa Skiren with its creamy, heather honeyed notes. The Co-op dram is good value indeed at £27 (October ‘23) and very smooth - which in my language means rather two dimensional, rather than with mouth-filling flavour. The Glengoyne 12 certainly was in a different league, but it’s about £12-15 more expensive. To my mind, if you can, spend the extra money. Good Housekeeping magazine, by the way, has a special place in my affections as I did part of my industrial experience from collage at the magazine’s HQ , which was then very close to Victoria Station in London.
Once we had food eaten our pie we brought out more whiskies and food. There were Orkney oatcakes to have with an amazing wedge of Dorset Blue Vinney cheese, an unpasteurised cows’ milk cheese made near Strurminster Newton and brought to us by visiting friends. I also made a humus with beetroot and orange added to the usual chick pea recipe. Stephan had baked sourdough that morning, so that was much enjoyed too. For pudding there was an autumn fruit salad with dried apricots and prunes, oranges, grapefruit, star anise and cinnamon, with chopped crystallised ginger added too. And a chocolate mousse, which I often make with Earl Grey tea added but on this occasion I used Lapsang Souchong. The smoky tea worked brilliantly with cocoa-rich milk chocolate and turned out how I prefer my peaty whiskies, with the extra flavour seasoning the chocolate mousse/spirit and not dominating in a raw, un-integrated way. Good autumnal fare to marry with Balvenie’s 14yo Caribbean Cask, a Lum Reek 12yo, Glasgow Distillery’s 1770 Cognac Cask finish (I was introduced to this dram by the wonderful gang at The Good Spirits Company in - appropriately -Glasgow) and Benriach’s delicious 16yo. And what a great time we had mixing and matching. The Caribbean Cask with the fruit salad was wonderful, the Lum Reek with the chocolate mousse great (predictable?), The Glasgow Cognac finish with the Blue Vinney was a combo where each added to the other, a great complementary match, and the Benriach 16yo, in my opinion, went with everything including the beetroot humus. But then I am very into Benriach at the moment.
Then Pat produced a sample of a 30yo Balvenie that she had, lurking about in her cupboard, and an other great whisky memory was made. Sharing whisky, food and friendship. It has to be done.
Our whisky lunch on Monday was Malc’s first food and whisky matching experience, and he enjoyed it very much. I’ve been enjoying such occasions for a long time, either informally round the table at home with friends, or in grander settings. These pictures are of a food and whisky pairing that I co-hosted in London for the Guild of Food Writers. Whisky legend Caesar da Silva introduced me to Wolfburn - little did I think at the time that I would live under 10 miles away from that exciting new distillery just a few years after this event. And I introduced Caesar to Compass Box, and specifically their delicious Enlightenment bottling. How I’d love to taste that again!
I am so envious of you - as a whisky writer I have never visited Orkney, but that is something I hope to rectify next year. It just really appeals to me, not only for the distilleries but the landscape as it looks stunning!