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‘Tis the season for rumination, reflection, and the airing of hour-long compilations taking an irreverent retrospective on the smorgasbord of the year’s events. At the Scotch Odyssey it is no different, so pour yourself a dram (preferrably one of those listed below) and join me for a root around my panniers of memory and an appraisal of what has been stuffed into them.

My 2010

No one remembers last winter now that the present one is showing itself to be so appalling and ghastly, but January and February were not conducive to outdoor riding. I had a tour to prepare for, but snow and ice were determined to stick around. Hours on the turbo trainer and a regime of running substituted serious cycling until the weather could string a sunny spell together. I saw the colour green for the first time in months, I amassed an OS map for every inch of Scotland and my relationship with the bike deepened auspiciously.

Six weeks of liberation, education, ingestion and exploration followed. Scotch whisky, like an age-restricted carrot on a stick, lured me from south to north and east to west; preserving me through all manner of meteorological phenomena; profound levels of fatigue and uncertainty, and many a crowded bunkhouse. The extraordinary, the execrable and the passionately insane coloured my quest, an expedition which may not have been quite as complete as I had initially hoped, but was made more precious on account of those unforeseen circumstances.

The Odyssey has introduced me to many peerless people and almost as many marvellous malts, both in April and May and since then. My many miles of pedalling in the name of Scotch secured me an invite for two days with Inver House Distillers. To be dry and conveyed by spark plugs and pistons to a host of desirable whisky destinations was a true pleasure, although I couldn’t shake off feelings of fraudulence without my Lycra’d attire. Meeting Lucas, Chris, Jason, Keith, Mark, Karen, Matt and of course Cathy were the pre-eminent highlights.

At university I am a fully paid-up member of the whisky society, and though weather scuppered our date with Compass Box’s John Glaser, Adelphi entertained us all marvellously in October.

The opportunity to catch up with Jane (congratulations, Cattanachs) and Fiona at Glen Garioch and Sandy in Dufftown was eagerly taken in September, and I hope they feature again in 2011. Further plans for the forthcoming year are not as yet concrete but some creative thinking will be done as to how I can make the Scotch Odyssey Blog more unique and indispensable to the Scotch malt tourist.

Favourite Five (My Moments):

#1   The visceral, unflinching, incomparable Isle of Skye. When the prospect of cycling to Scotland’s whisky distilleries began to make sense again.

#2   How it feels to pull on and zip up dry cycling clothing, having been revived by two lovely women in an Eastern Highland distillery after a thorough, dispiriting drenching. Huntly looked a great deal better in the fogged up euphoria of ’Mission Accomplished’.

Not my clothes, but the same clothes rack.

#3   We left Wick at… some time in the evening. We arrived in Tain… later. In the intervening period, in the darkened minibus tanking through Caithness and Sutherland, I understood what a great bunch of people are out there writing about whisky.

#4    A little whisky shop in Tomintoul has some big personalities bottled inside it. The Druries know how to guide their customers around the gems of Scotland: Aultmore, Bowmore – what a way to toast having made it to Speyside.

#5   Bladnoch and Dumfries and Galloway. Inexpressible joy. I’ll be back.

Favourite Five (Drams): 

#1   Mortlach 16-year-old. I do miss its rich, fruitcake and nut flavours.

#2   Lagavulin 12-year-old Cask Strength. Astonishing at the distillery on a scorching May day, almost as good in the back of a minibus in November.

#3   Aberlour 14-year-old Single Cask Bourbon-Matured. The dram I dream about from time to time. No sense asking what I’m going to be doing as part of my 21st birthday celebrations: in Warehouse #1, salivating.

#4   Kilchoman Autumn 2009 Release. This is one serious little malt: so peaty, so sweet with that faint whiff of the farmyard.

#5   Redbreast 15-year-old. I know, it isn’t Scottish, but its really quite extraordinary. The whisk(e)y horizons are broading, and a bike belongs in the picture.

Favourite Five (Malt Moments of 2010):

#1   Gordon & MacPhail Mortlach 70-year-old. An historic whisky moment, presided over and made possible by an iconic Scottish company.

#2   Feis Ile 2010. I was on Islay and Jura a week before things got underway, and the sense of anticipation was extraordinary. I hope to make the trip myself at some stage.

#3   Chivas’s ‘The Age Matters’ campaign: a step in the right direction and some healthy debate prompted.

#4   Whisky on the box: Oz and Hugh, Dara, Griff and Rory have all got exposure for various brands on the television.

#5   Dramming literature: a vintage year for whisky books, with the typically excellent Malt Whisky Yearbook hitting the shelves again. Dave Broom, Gavin D Smith and Dominic Roskrow have added their considerable weight to my collection.

*      *      *

Thank you for all your support and interest this year, and I hope to hear from you in 2011.

While the goose is in the oven, working its magic, I thought I ought to get the Glencairn out and evaluate the new Ballantine’s Christmas Reserve – and they mean ‘Reserve’: this is a limited annual release – whilst under the influence of the festive spirit. Many thanks to Chris from Edinburgh Whisky Blog for my sample.

Ballantine’s Christmas Reserve 40% £27

Colour – Dark, rich amber – almost Sherry nut brown.

Nose – Dried fruit peel floats out of the glass initially, a sweet grainy quality following on. Oakiness is in evidence, too, and in keeping with the brief I get sweet buttered gingerbread as an associated aroma. Dark juicy fruits are heavily involved, too, with orange, rum and raisin ice cream, and toffee. Dark chocolate is also present.

     Water reveals Scottish tablet, in addition to the toffee. Red apples appear later on. It is less Christmas-y than when undiluted but a rich fragrant Speyside malt is plainly in there directing the aromas.

Palate – Light, sweet and grainy at first, building toffee, nut and wine notes.

    Water accentuates the dark malty qualities, in addition to a little rich earthy peat. Ginger wine.

Finish – Rather short, both with and without water, with toffee a mainstay and some dried fruits. Some sweet apple appears first time round, cinnamon and chocolate Swiss roll with a few drops of water.

So…?: A different, well put-together whisky, although I feel it loses some of its ‘Christmas’ credentials with water. The blended sector is expanding at a rate of knots, and it is one I would like to see more of in affordable miniatures. I wouldn’t buy a whole bottle of this, but it is a pleasant drink.

Tasting notes…? On the Scotch Odyssey Blog?! I know, not very long ago I was passing the buck as far as tasting notes were concerned to other bloggers kicking around. I still maintain that there is no reason why you should listen to my opinion any more than the teams of others reviewing single malts like they’re going out of fashion, but my Odyssey was a while ago now, and besides my photographs, drams are the only mediums through which I may experience again something of the atmosphere and spirit of my travels.

I won’t post tasting notes – or ‘sensings’, a distinction I shall explain shortly - regularly, but when I come across a malt (or blend) that transports me back to a distillery, a grass verge, B&B or restaurant, I’ll let you know. Chris, when we met last month, suggested I might like to experiment with posting my reviews out into the blog-sphere, and talking to newly-inducted Malt Maniac Keith Wood (Whisky Emporium) and hearing his approach to composing tasting notes obliged me to consider the proposition still further. So for all my travels shook my belief in terroir as in inviolable concept, rather than abandon it altogether I have modified this most subjective of sensory factors. Terroir, or ‘a sense of place’, just as it is unique to each distillery, it is also wholly unique to each of us and our own personal interpretation. It will not manifest itself to the same degree, in the same sense, for every person. All the same, I have six weeks’ worth of memories which the single malts of Scotland are primed to trigger, and when they do I hope you will be interested to learn the context and the nature of these echoes – hence ‘sensings’; I hoped it wouldn’t sound quite so pretentious once I explained it.

In the meanwhile, and though I won’t be scoring the malts which prompt a post, I would like to adopt the approach of Jeff Hershauer(Scotch Hobbyist - a truly excellent blog if you haven’t found it already) and state my preferences straight off the bat in order that you might get to know what I am about and how my tastes may differ from yours.

Flavour explorer - not expert.

My favourite malts:

Anything from Caol Ila; Highland Park 12, 18 and 25YO; Bowmore 18YO; Talisker 18YO; anything from Balblair (the new releases); Ardbeg Uigeadail; Kilchoman; every Glenfarclas I have ever had (10; 15 and 30YO); Longmorn 15YO; Linkwood 12YO; Mortlach 16YO; The Glenlivet; The Dalmore 15YO (with just a smidgen of water).

There is a fair amount of variety there, I suppose, with both rich and fragrant malts on show. In the main, I will always respond to a malt that speaks up about its raw materials: I love a bit of oak in a whisky, and rich earthiness is always a welcome flavour. To step fairly boorishly on my original statement, however, as much as I may strive for consistency there is every likelihood that those malts which make it up here will, on account of my earlier criteria, possess wildly conflicting merits. We’ll see how it goes…

As one of the few independent whisky-makers in Scotland, producing some very lovely drams in a wide variety of styles as well as providing some mighty fine distillery tours in the process, I felt their latest release was worth a mention.

The first of four annual single cask releases - from the same cask.

When I visited in May, it was self-evident that Glengoyne are not afraid to try something new. The distillery shop devotes an entire wall to single cask bottlings; some of these I listed in my write-up for the distillery and may still be available if you make the fourteen mile trip north out of Glasgow. However, it seems Stuart Hendry, Brand Heritage Manager, wishes to push the envelope still further and to that end 100 bottles of The Glengoyne Christmas Cask shall be available at the distillery on the 28th of this month (December, just in case there are some of you who are temporally challenged and have not been able to equate the wintery weather and the incessant Christmas commercials to a fixed point in the year).

This is, say Glengoyne, a world’s first. Instead of draining a whole cask at once for a single cask release, they shall draw off 70 litres at a time for the next four years to demonstrate how a whisky evolves within the cask. Personally, I love this idea. Mr Hendry knew the nature of us whisky enthusiasts when he said, ‘we at the distillery are able to taste caks as they mature, witnessing their highs and lows, their flavour peaks and troughs as they wind their way towards maturity. What if we were able to share that with our anorak-wearing whisky chums?’ I cannot take offence at the anorak label, having waltzed into The Glenlivet for my first ever distillery tour three years ago sporting a nice green one.

However, this is an experiment not just in a whisky’s flavour development, but maturation more generally. As an excellent article by Ian Wisniewski in the latest Whisky Magazine explains, the ‘headspace’ is normally sacrosanct, subject to the mores of maturation atmosphere and the occasional master blender’s valinch. The practise is not normally to remove such a proportion of spirit at any one time. The whisky world, therefore, in addition to Glengoyne aficionados, shall be monitoring the developments of First Fill Oloroso Sherry Butt Cask 790, filled in 2002, closely. Allegedly ‘rich, with hints of rosehip syrup, cocoa beans, oak and spice’ at present, ‘it still clings to the last of its spirited youth, but delivering plenty and promising much more.’

Glengoyne is not unfamiliar with the concept of single cask releases.

Available only at the distillery, this inaugural release is priced at £100. I only hope they do little sample bottles, too – that would be truly scientific, and mean that I might stand a chance of trying some!

Brief Encounter: the Spirit of Speyside ready for departure.

It is something of a blessing in disguise that I have not yet had time to recount my time aboard the Spirit of Speyside. With four inches of snow smothering everything outside I welcome any opportunity to recollect warmer times.

This is the most northerly heritage railway in the Scotland, although it was not for this reason that I dragged my parents along for an out-and-back rattle between Dufftown and Keith. It touts itself as ‘The Whisky Line’, and so I could not pass it up.

On my squeaky, grim-faced ride from Strathisla back to Dufftown in April the road hugged this single-track line for part of the way, bridges leap-frogging rails and the river Isla for a number of miles. The sun had appeared, and arable, wooded Speyside was showing itself very handsomely. I wanted to see what it was all about, having come across listings in the guidebooks one finds in Bed and Breakfasts.

Highly visible: the proximity of Balvenie and Glenfiddich bolster claims that this is indeed The Whisky Line.

A little bit of history first, however. The railway is one of the principle factors explaining why so many distilleries were built in the region. The plentiful raw materials dictated the location of a distillery in the first instance, but the train made distilling economically viable post-Excise Act, allowing the whisky which was ultimately produced to be transported to the markets of Edinburgh, Glasgow, and indeed the rest of the world with relative ease. Many distilleries were built beside, or had sidings constructed for them, from the main branch lines. The Speyside Way follows the echoing clatters of steam trains past, and many bridges over the Spey would have conveyed engines.

Salvaged and run by volunteers, the Keith & Dufftown Railway was opened in 2001, and operates on a dedicated timetable throughout the year. If you are planning your own visit, however, it is always worth checking the website in advance, although booking is not necessarily essential, and wasn’t for us as we pulled into the station at Dufftown on a Saturday in September.

I had been on the station platform before – in April as I left Dufftown on the way to Cardhu following a concerted effort to find out exactly where Balvenie is. Diving down a side road after Glenfiddich, behind some warehouses which had unfortunately collapsed due to the chronic winter weather, I passed under a bridge and then turned left – Balvenie Castle lying to my right – to be met with the various Balvenie buildings. Reflecting on how dearly I would have liked to have been rummaging around inside, I returned to the road, only to notice a puff of smoke from the pagoda heads – they were kilning malt! The best view then of Balvenie in its entirety had been from the platform, and so it was on this occasion.

Besides the waiting room and information points, there is also a railway carriage (static) kitted out as a cafe, and it serves wonderful scones, if you like that kind of thing. The train itself is not quite steam train romance, but it is comfortable, and feels very authentic. With a screech of the whistle and a shudder of machinery we were away on the eleven mile stretch to Keith.

Balvenie and Glenfiddich are obviously highly visible distilleries from the train track, but so is the silent – but still standing – Parkmore just on the other side of the Fiddich Viaduct – sixty metres above the river in question and one of the most-time consuming and expensive areas of the restoration project. Forest, glades and open fields slide past your window – this is a very leisurely ride. On the left as you aim for Keith is the man-made Park Loch. Teaming with wildlife (they list buzzards, red squirrels, deer and many others on the website) this is a very picturesque section, and one can only imagine the scene in winter when they run their ‘Santa Specials’: for the kiddies, mainly. Other animal life include the inmates of a donkey sanctuary. Look out for them.

On the approach to Keith, Strathmill is highly prominent, and is the first distillery to sup at the River Isla, which rushes alongside the train for a considerable portion of the ride. At Keith Town station you can either alight and explore Keith (don’t miss Strathisla Distillery) or get out and stretch your legs and savour the relaxing procession back to Dufftown. Please note, it is useful to check which station is that of initial departure. We could have hopped on at Keith, but we would have had to wait a few hours before there would be another train to take us back again. Our journey had a fifteen minute pause at Keith prior to the return leg.

The Keith & Dufftown Railway website.

If you are tired of waiting for me to produce the definitive tome to the world of Scotch whisky tourism (and I know I am) then please allow me to do the next best thing and point you in the direction of two men who have done just that.

Not content with contributing to a thorough, and to my mind successful, revision of malt whisky’s seminal work – the Malt Whisky Companion of Michael Jackson - Gavin D. Smith, in partnership with Graeme Wallace, has released a gem of a book which does not follow the whisky out of the distillery to the bars and shops, but stays behind to take a closer look around.

Discovering Scotland’s Distilleries may have been the subject line in my correspondences with Scottish Field prior to their publishing an article of mine in October, but I learnt earlier this week that it is also the title of a pioneering work concerned with informing the whisky enthusiast of how he or she might get the most out of their time amongst the towns, hills and pagodas of Scotland’s whisky landscapes. I am delighted to see this work appear, because it confirms in my mind how the attentions of the industry, and of the whisky-drinker, have become increasingly focused on the idea of provenance. Nothing was more crucial to me when I elected to sit on a slender saddle for six weeks and pedal to as many distilleries as possible. We now wish to make a journey and plenty of discoveries beyond the drinks cupboard and the nation of Scotland is eminently well-euipped to accommodate such urges.

Rather than the ‘coffee-table books’ you may find lauding the Scottish landscape and the romantic, artisanal industry within it, this is a slender volume (195mm by 120mm) to be thrust into an overnight bag or coat pocket for use out ‘in the field’. The rigidity of its thick card cover would suggest it would withstand even my abusive shovings into backpacks and panniers. In fact, I rather wish I had had it to hand prior to and during my Odyssey.

Divided into a general introduction covering whisky history, the geographical regions which, for all the concept has been questioned of late, is still highly relevant to the traveller, and a very evocative passage on the present state of distillery tourism. Congratulations are in order to Gavin Cunningham and company at Tullibardine who lured in the most thirsty tourists during 2008.

There follows a series of thoughtful suggestions as to combining a distillery visit with a general excursion in Scotland, focusing on the major cities and also outlying rural districts. Some of these I undertook by bike: the accessibility of the ’Eastern Perthshire Trail’ I can attest to - even on two wheels! Together with how you might work your day around a peep at Glenturret and Tullibardine, for example, are listings of bars, hotels and eateries. These sections really are fine pieces of research, although I’m quite certain they do not cater for the budgetary considerations I was obliged to observe!

Both this and the section detailing those distilleries which offer tours take a counter-clockwise route around the country (in much the same manner as I did). From the relatively accessible malts and distilleries of the Lowlands, the book is structured to reflect the increasingly intrepid nature of getting to the far-flung birthplaces of some of the other malts you may have encountered. For each distillery with a regular tour in operation (fifty are listed) there is a double-page spread with information, on the left-hand leaf, regarding ownership, the malt itself and the production, in addition to distillery and local history. The right-hand page deals solely with the ‘Visitor Experience’ with an extended prose commentary in addition to listings of times and tour specifications. It is all so up-to-date it is quite unnerving, and proves my suspicion that many distilleries were set to upgrade the tourist experience shortly after I passed through.

The remainder of the book approaches the other half of the industry which, officially, don’t provide an established tour. However, there is the suggestion that, with perseverance and charm, you may be able to arrange a look around.

I’m still waiting on some page proofs from the publishers to illustrate much of what I had to explain above, and when they arrive I shall return and slot them in. Of course visitor centres function, on the most basic, cynical level, as the most immediate and stylishly-furnished extensions of the owners’ marketing departments, but there has been a committed, coordinated response to the increased interest in where one’s whisky comes from, and as a result there are some truly memorable experiences on offer to cater for all tastes – and which the Scotch Odyssey Blog can still help you to distinguish between!

Discovering Scotland’s Distilleries is available from Amazon and Waterstones at GBP £9.99.

Hello, folks. Nice to see you. It is a real pity, is it not though, that you cannot apparently see my lovely Jura landscapes?

Having felt compelled by my email from the folk at Isle of Jura to blog about their new photography competition I discovered another urgent missive from the lovely people who host my wesbite saying that one of their servers had been under attack (we all feel like that sometimes, eh?) and, with regret etc. etc., this happens to be the assemblage of microchips onto which all my hard work is written. My first tip off was when the post you can see below disappeared. I replaced it, and then that one disappeared, only for the original to surface from the swollen ditch of cyberspace like some decomposed corpse with none of its pictures showing.

They are in the process of migrating all data to somewhere else, whatever the hell that means. This is annoying, because I haven’t received my confirmatory email stating that all is right as rain again but it has been rather a long time. I hope that the harmless snap I attach to this post – and the post itself - shows up. It may not. Patience, it seems, is key here.

In other news, Lucasz of Alembic Communications has been keeping in touch regarding the three adorable distilleries I visited last month. If you thought Edinburgh Airport was bad, check out Knockdhu: 2.5 feet of snow and minus 19 degrees! In all, ‘Not the best possible whisky making weather,’ according to Gordon Bruce. Let’s hope his three remaining warehouses withstand the snowy assault: two of them had to be demolished following the excessive amounts of white stuff sitting on them for three months last winter. Fingers crossed!