South Ronaldsay is regarded as the Orkney Riviera, but we still get snow. Not much and not often: we get more days when there’s a hard frost and the sand on the beach is solid to walk on. That plays with both your head and your hamstrings. But we have lying snow at the moment and therefore I’m allowed whisky on my porridge at breakfast time: truly the best possible start to any day. Three days running and it looks like tomorrow will make it four!
Now don’t go all sniffy on me because it’s Grouse! You simply cannot have an Event in Orkney without a raffle, and whilst I am certain that some things go round and round from raffle to raffle, I was definitely keeping the half bottle of Grouse that I won at Christmas with winter porridge in mind. I’d tell you more about how I make porridge with flaked oatmeal from Barony Mill here on the Islands, but this blog is about whisky and will (mainly) remain so.
You met Chris and Stephan - our new friends in Orkney who run the Hanse Spirit Festival - in my last blog about our whisky lunch together. Their spirits event is coming up soon at the end of January If you are in north-west Germany do go. ‘The Boys’ are really just kids and Chris was celebrating his 50th birthday a few weeks ago. They had obviously enjoyed our whisky lunch and invited friends for a similar event and a couple of drams worthy of such a milestone. I had COVID and missed out. That is until we were driving past their home on the way back from the dentist after Christmas. Luckily the dentist was for Nick and he doesn't drink whisky - and Chris had kindly ensured there was special whisky enough for me.
Any Tom Russell fans out there will remember his song Canadian Whiskey and it’s chorus “..She drank Canadian whiskey, pure blended whiskey, she drank it like wine..” Well, this Seagrams was not in that class, and not to be swigged in quantity.
A 6yo whisky - bottled 50 years ago. Now the bottling age wouldn’t have added anything to it but my goodness! Unmistakably a Canadian dram - you can tell - and so full of the Parisian pastry shop nosings and flavours that I love: honeyed, cinnamon and nutmeg, creamy and with the buttery, pastry nose of the patisserie: surprisingly long-lasting on the palate and the finish. It was a delicious treat, a once-in-a-lifetime taste for sure and one that I was very pleased to enjoy. Lucky me indeed.
Little did I think when I was wandering around the fabulous gardens at Glen Grant distillery in September ‘23 that I would have another enormous treat in store for me at the turn of the year featuring their whisky. Glen Grant isn’t a whisky that I know, although the name Grant is almost synonymous with Scottish malt whiskies. Think Glenfarclass, then other Grants were involved with Highland Park for a while and so it goes on. There were numerous Grants in whisky. You’ll probably know of more than me.
Glen Grant was founded by the Grant brothers John and James, before passing to Young James. It is now owned by the Campari Group. James the Elder was Provost of Elgin and very involved with bringing the railway to Speyside which, of course, made the region what it is today. Incidentally, that forced the decline of the previously dominant Campbeltown region. Whilst close to Glasgow and all its blenders, Campbeltown relied on ships taking the whisky through the Firth of Clyde, which was unreliable at the mercy of the weather. Some might say trains are not much more reliable …
We got to visit Glen Grant because friends from Orkney moved to near Elgin: we’ve got so much more whisky heritage, then and now, to explore with them!
How could this whisky, a 50yo Glen Grant, not be good, distilled as it was presumably to celebrate my birth?! It was bottled in 2006 at just 40% abv which really surprised me once I tasted it. Bottled by Gordon & MacPhail (Elgin, of course) Chris’s 50yo Glen Grant was one of only 250 bottles. I don’t even want to think about the cost of what I was drinking - but WOW! Really hard to believe the so much depth and roundness of flavour could be delivered by a 40% dram. Huge sherried flavours of rich, plump raisins, marzipan and subtly spicy vineyard kitchens rather than distillery processes. I didn't take notes - I lived the moment of drinking the whisky. I don’t imagine for a moment that any Glen Grant core range whisky available now would be anything like what I tasted at Chris and Stephan’s. I think the distillery uses American oak now, creating the light, bright and fruity whiskies that make the label Italy’s favourite Single Malt Scottish Whisky. That is not my ‘in the moment’ Glen Grant memory at all. Indeed, Glen Grant recently released their oldest ever bottling, Devotion, a 70yo. I must remember to ask Chris and Stephan if they have a bottle of that? 50yo’s and whisky porridge - whisky treats indeed!