• Dispatches from the Whisky Trail •
-since Matt still has the Official Tasting Notes, I will continue Drew’s Whisky Travelog-
We landed in Glasgow, picked up the car (hey Sandy, this one’s broken! The steering wheel is on the wrong side!) and headed off on the 3 hour drive to the Highlands and Muckrach Castle. http://www.celticcastles.com/castles/muckrach/
We were on our way to Perth, about 45 minutes in to the drive when we thought a wee pit stop may be in order. We pulled off the highway in a little town of Auchterarder and stopped into the first little rest stop we saw. Let’s see… what do we have here… family restaurant, outdoor outfitters, sweets and sheeps (your standard Scottish Tartan Tourist shop -like the “maple and mountie” shops that litter all parts of canada), Tullibardine Distillery, Starbucks… Ah, here we are -Public Washrooms! Ahhh.
…Hey, waitaminit!
Did that say Tullibardine Distillery? (pronounced “tele BARD in”) And the Starbucks is actually IN the Tullibardine giftshop? Honey, we GOT to go in! I really like Tullibardine, but you really LOVE the Starbucks! Maybe you can take a tour of how they make a grande soy latte!
We didn’t do a tour, but we did do a tasting.
18 yr Rum Finnish
12 yr Sherry Finnish
0 yr Pure pot still
2 vente chi lattes
I bought the 200ml rum finish. Slightly more caramel than the sherry, and I knew they didn’t ship the rum finish over to canada. (official LSS Tasting notes to follow)
But the Pure Pot! Wholly Honey-Fire Molly! If that is what comes straight out of the stills (and it is!) I can see why by law, they have to age it for no less than 3 years in oak barrels! It’s Scottish Moonshine, and I can see if there was any doubt where the real magic of scotch making takes place, the answer is all in the barrel! Not that the Pure Pot didn’t have flavor… it was a thick buckwheat honey sandwich on fresh sourdough bread that you then lit on fire and ate. At 72% or 144 proof, that dram packs a punch! If Pure Pot was the national drink, Scotland would either have an unstoppable army of raging barbarians, or be a barren unpopulated wasteland after the Great Nation-Wide Bar Fight that would start somewhere in Glasgow after Last-Call on Robbie Burns Day and stretch out to the furthest reaches of the country, and the very last Scot standing, having no one left to fight, would then insult his own mother and then punch himself to death.