A Mixologist’s Week of Whisky

For my birthday last year (October 2008) my wife had arranged a wonderful surprise for me. We were off to visit the famous Wight Mouse pub on the Isle of Wight.

As a passionate whisky devotee, a day sampling the delights of this shrine to the distilleries of Scotland was something that had long sat top of my list of things to do before I turned 40. At the age of 44, it was well overdue!

As I sat in my car, with wife and in-laws in attendance (father-in-law is as mad about whisky as me) contemplating the 365 different whiskies the Mouse had to offer and awaiting my turn to embark the Isle of Wight ferry, my wife made a crushing announcement. She had phoned the Mouse that morning only to discover that regardless of the fact that the pub’s website said otherwise, the Wight Mouse had been sold and the fabled collection of whisky was no longer!

So, as she placated me with a birthday bottle of the delicious sherry cask Macallan 18, and we regardless continued on our island sojourn, I vowed to create my own collection of 365 different whiskies…. 1 for every day of the year.

One year on and the collection is going quite well and so with my 45th birthday approaching we decided to make for the hills and spend a week touring some of Scotland’s finest distilleries.

With one 16 year-old child (Alex) and 2 dogs in tow, we loaded ourselves in to the motor-home that was to become our abode for the next week and began our malty pilgrimage. Our first stop was the Glenkinchie distillery close to Edinburgh.

We took one of the guided tours which gave Alex his first chance to see the intestines of a great whisky producing institution as well as seeing the tallest wash and spirit stills in the whole of Scotland. In fact, when you see the height of the stills, it becomes clear how Glenkinchie achieve such a full flavoured but light whisky. I picked up a bottle of the 14 year-old Distillers Edition, double matured in Sherry casks and bottled at 43%.... the collection expands by one!

On our second day we had to stay in Edinburgh because Alex was catching a flight back to London that evening (college on the Monday). Accordingly a visit to the Scotch Whisky Experience by Edinburgh Castle was in order.

The ‘experience’ itself was a bit touristy and trashy, not to mention very expensive. However, it was saved by the highlight of the tour, a chance to view the Claive Vidiz whisky collection, the largest collection in the world numbering nearly three and a half thousand bottles.

Claive Vidiz amassed the collection over a period of 35 years, and when he sold it to Diageo for an undisclosed sum it amounted to 3,384 bottles.

One of the highlights is a bottle of Dimple Pinch, which was the most expensive limited edition bottle of Scotch whisky on the market when Claive paid $1000 for it in 1969.

Another rarity, as there are only 100 bottles in the world, is a Strathmill single malt that was produced to celebrate the distillery’s 100th anniversary. Some were given to heads of state and other VIPs, and one was given to Claive Vidiz for his collection.

Suddenly my personal collection of seventy odd bottles seemed so…......... minute!

Once in the collection room, I would have been happy to spend all day there. In fact, I would have been delighted to pay my entrance fee, forego the whisky tour and go straight to the room! And what an incredible sight it was. An expansive mirrored room with graduated glass shelves running the entire perimeter and from floor to ceiling, all behind glass casing, embellished by dramatic lighting, marble flooring and a stunning chandelier centre-piece.

To view 3,384 bottles of whisky, many of which I had only heard of in hushed tones, others that I had never heard of at all, all displayed under one roof was quite an awe inspiring experience. It was like being in a sweet shop, and no ordinary sweet shop at that. This was the Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory of whisky.

I really don’t have the blog space to give this collection anywhere near the column inches it deserves. However, suffice to say that the rarity and value of the display plus the historical significance of many of the inclusions, not to mention the sheer impact of seeing such a gathering in one place simply means that you have to visit next time you are in Scotland.

For me the allotted 20 minutes was woefully short, but was just as well (or so my wife said) as we had to get back to the airport, drop Alex and start making our way to the next distillery on the list, Tullibardine.

Tullibardine has always held significance for me. Not that I had ever tasted it. It is just that my whisky-mad father-in-law had always raved about the bottle that my wife (his daughter) had bought for him on her last trip to Edinburgh. At that time, in 1998, her acquisition was made at one of the many City whisky shops. This time we were going straight to the site of production.

To find out how the Tullibardine visit went and to hear more about the many distilleries we visited on our tour, come back for the following instalment next week….

© Paul Martin, October 2009.