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… Or Why I Love Dave Broom

The World Atlas of Whisky stands aloof from its peers. Released amid a deluge of other whisky titles, Broom has deconstructed, cogitated upon and reconstituted the subject of cereal-based distillates in a manner and to a degree I have come across nowhere else.

‘At first glance,’ Broom suggests, ‘the creation of a whisky style may seem like the triumph of technology’. But he has looked again: dusting off, picking apart, shaking about and inspecting from all angles facets of the whisky debate to discover that ‘in truth it lies at the interface between science, economics, creativity… and landscape.’ In other words, everything is infinitely more complex. Production processes? History? Regional continuity of styles? Don’t make him laugh. ‘What is whisky?’ he asks. ‘Anything you want it to be’.

So, having stripped away all of our landmarks and comfort blankets, what does he offer the novice and initiate in exchange? Broom, quite ingeniously, directs us straight back to the crux of the matter: flavour. When contemplating a whisky, Broom urges us to ‘concentrate’ – not on extraneous details of geography and other easily digestible but specious ‘rules of thumb’ – but on the spirit as it converses with you. Dave can help with supplying the minutiae of how your malt, bourbon, Irish pot still whiskey or whatever it happens to be was crafted (and he does, in anorak-pleasing comprehensiveness) but such processes only begin to make a tangible bit of sense once we get round to ‘sticking our noses in the glass and inhaling.’ We all, Broom promises, have the ability to understand the flavours in front of us. ‘A whisky’s character is expressed through the pictures in the taster’s mind’, he asserts; whatever we imagine when provoked by our dialogue with whisky is our truth, and it can and ought to sustain us in our private sensory explorations. Broom’s employment of technical vocabulary is descriptive, there only to inform the larger, richer image that is flavour in front of which the reader is left to make their own qualitative judgements.

This is not to say that Broom is forever impartial and objective, however. When he is not performing an explicatory role he indulges an artful evangelism for those spirits whose technical genesis belies, intensifies or even contradicts the personality of the final product. His entry for Linkwood distillery is one example amongst countless others that are so beautifully composed and strikingly phrased that they compel a reciprocal ardour and curiosity in the reader. Crucially, though, Broom always marries enthusiasm for a particular quality with descriptions of how that quality came about. For example, Broom may marvel at how ‘Linkwood’s new make smells of the skin of peaches, of light apple blossom falling in an orchard; in the mouth it sticks and seems to spin in a ball in the middle of the tongue’, but he can attribute this fruitiness which he loves so much to the clear wort and long ferment and the complex mouthfeel to the intensive copper contact in the ‘Rubenesque’ stills. It is never the case of extrapolating some arcane aroma and basing a grandiose proclamation upon its equivocal existence but deducting effect from regimented cause. You can go away, try a Linkwood and in consequence appreciate where these notable characteristics have derived from. Whether they are to your liking is not for Broom to prescribe.

Perhaps the element of the book I value most – even above its written style, its abundant information and its passion – is the unprecedented endeavour to analyse the new make spirit of each site. He calls it the distillery’s ‘DNA’, the result of the distiller’s specification and skill of execution unadulterated by oak. Perhaps it is here that Broom’s willingness to factor out, subvert and democratise facile terminology as I mentioned at the beginning is most demonstrably seen. Legally, it isn’t ‘whisky’ and some of his tasting notes don’t appear to reflect any substance we might recognise as such (‘Chinese cough medicine’; ‘wet chamois’; ‘meaty’, and ‘feral’) but it is boldly, squarely, obsessively concerned with flavour.

I would recommend Broom’s tome to all those who possess even the vaguest interest in beverage appreciation, and not just that of whisky but wine, beer – any other liquid you can think of. By comparing spirits according to flavour and not process or location, Broom has rendered the subject far more accessible; he has struck upon the correct terminological approach, the most enlightening blend of tones that illuminate how it should be that nearly 100 different Scotch whisky distilleries – and the many many more across the globe – contrive to produce subtly different but ultimately distinctive styles of spirit from the same raw materials.

At last there is a work that can both inform, empower and liberate the whisky neophyte, exploding the nonsense some in tasting clubs, magazines and the industry itself expound, airily typecasting some distilleries and even whole areas as ‘this’ or ‘that’. It is, I repeat, a much more complex world but one which only makes sense when we reject misleading received reason and promote our senses as the primary tools of navigation.

Dave Broom, The World Atlas of Whisky, Mitchell Beazley. £30.

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.