Whisky Online Blog

Just a quick post today as I’m off on holiday tomorrow for a week and a bit and there is still some packing of stuff to be done. Today I thought I would choose a piece of music to suit a whisky I tried very recently in the great Bon Accord pub in Glasgow. It was over a week ago and I’ve been racking my brains since trying to think of something to pair it with. The whisky in question was this little joybeast:

This GG fizzes with flavour like a sherbet jacuzzi (whatever one of those might be).

I had seen this Glen Grant kicking about in a number of places in recent years and always been curious about it, its 75cls so presumably was bottled in the early nineties and distilled sometime in the early sixties. Already this is alluring enough but it didn’t prepare me for what I found in the glass. Given it blind I might have said Glen Grant/Mortlach/Strathisla/Macallan but more importantly I would have sworn it was some kind of pre-war distillate. I’ve never smelt anything with that combination of peat, fruit, menthol and rancio that was distilled after 1947. It had something devastatingly old-school about it. One of these whiskies you feel guilty for not drinking while in a gentleman’s cigar club, sporting a monocle and discussing the problematic upkeep of the serving staff at your manor in dorset. For a while I considered trying to be really clever and find some sort of obscure, juxtapositional indie band to pair it with, I listened to things like Mumford & Sons and fleet Foxes, then I thought maybe Radiohead or The Bees. I realised it was time to re-evaluate this angle when I was staring blankly at various online videos of Lady GaGa trying to fabricate some tenuous link between a beautiful, thrillingly retro malt whisky and a be-frocked, all prancing, all singing diva that looks like the accidental product of a meldown at the handbag factory. She’s like the Joker realised by Gucci. Anyway I decided to just go with what felt right not what seemed clever and in five minutes I came up with this.

Ragtime is a very difficult style to play, at least it is on the guitar, I couldn’t speak for the piano but I imagine it is a great deal more difficult than the utterly brilliant Winifred Atwell makes it look here. Just listening to this brings back some olfactory memories of these kind of old school whiskies. You can imagine the world in black and white with Winifred at the piano, a smoky club and a few empty bottles of Haig littering the bar. Ragtime has such an unmistakable, familiar sound to it, it manages to be somewhat timeless yet of such a distinct era in history. Who among us has not grown up with The Entertainer engraved on our subconscious from an indeterminate early age? You could probably pair these kinds of whisky well with Jazz just as easily, it makes sense, the musical freedom of Jazz, its unpredictability, its luxurious expressive qualities, they compliment the complexity in great whiskies, bringing to life their more surprising and quirky personality angles. But for me there is something in the melodic, off-beat structure of Ragtime that is more appealing, I suppose its my love of song craft. Ragtime is exactly what it says, ragged time, it can be malleable, played with and improvised within but there is still a skin, a beautiful, melody draped framework to hang these variations around. It is these compositional qualities inherent in ragtime, the basic foundations that hold everything in place, that makes it so good with whisky, the structure and balance of a great dram, its length and progression, the journey from aroma to finish and all the nuances in between. Sadly there aren’t many players of Winifred’s class, but then there aren’t that many whiskies in the same league as these old style drams, I’ve probably said this before but its worth repeating, life would be very dull if there were. Please check out more of Winifred’s music and go out of your way to try this glorious Glen Grant.

…but who needs it when you can drink whisky? I thought we’d have a Scottish film for a change today, one that seems to defy all mudslinging and criticism, one that still remains a bloody brilliant, endlessly watchable film. These days Scottish cinema is doing cartwheels through endless barrages of grey cement and drizzle, interspersed with harrowing violence and no holds barred sex scenes in a bid to shake off the shackles of tartanry and the cailyard for ever. Local Hero and many of the films by director Bill Forsyth remain curious oddballs, unwilling to comply with either camp, they may be no Red Road but they are no Bonnie Doon either. I first saw Local Hero probably about ten years ago and its a film I’ve returned to so many times since. It is the rare film that manages to tread such a fine line between comedy tinged with gentle pathos, drama, detailed characters and genuine affection for its setting. Like many of Forsyth’s films there is a dark undercurrent but it remains very much an undercurrent and is all the more effective for it. There are also the spiritual aspects, the way Mac arrives at the village by way of the mist is a clever update of the Bonnie Doon mythology, poking gentle fun but allowing for a compromise between the cailyard and the real world. In fact Local Hero seems to be just that, a fine balance between what we dream Scotland can be and what it really is. But most importantly of all the affection never leaves it, people fall in love with Local Hero the same way that they fall in love with Scotland itself. It is a rare and wonderful film indeed.

A classic scene that encapsulates the whole film a lot better than the official trailer.

There is another scene, you may remember if you’ve seen it and especially if you’re into whisky, where Gordon makes a big deal of pouring Mac ‘a pure malt whisky, 42 years old’. This has always sent the whisky nerd in me a little bonkers. Hmmm…bottled early eighties, 42 years old, could it be pre war distillation? Does he mean pure as in vatted malt or is it just a layman describing a single malt, what distillery is it from? That shape of bottle, the screw cap, it must be a Gordon & MacPhail bottling, but which one??? As you can see it inspires some major nerdery, though in all probability the whisky is as fictitious as the film itself.

Glen Grant 1936. A fruit and peat poem.

However Gordon did hit the nail on the head when he picked that style of whisky. I was recently fortunate enough to taste a 1936 Glen Grant bottled at 42 years old in 1978 by G&M. It was a truly stunning whisky, a style that is long departed all modern distilleries. These old Speysiders that have spent years in great casks followed by years in glass are some of the finest malts you will encounter in my book, the fruit character they display with often a good deal of peat is, for me anyway, as close to perfection that you dare dream whisky could come.

It is this style of whisky that I would recommend with a film like Local Hero, yes these whiskies are expensive and yes they are hard to find but sometimes a special film and special friends demand such a dram. Now I’m not saying rush out and buy lots of pre war malts, they will usually set you back the best part of £1000. However there are ways and means, Gordon & MacPhail still bottle many aged malts from Glen Grant and Strathisla as well as several non-descript own lable malts, ie MacPhails 50yo for example. These whiskies are by and large excellent and, equally importantly, they are available at fair prices. I don’t understand why they hang around on shelves for years but they frequently do.

However, if you are looking for an amazing pre-war malt…

Mortlach 1936 43yo. It brings a tear to the eye just looking at it.

This is something else in the same league as the Glen Grant and from the same vintage. I think these sorts of whiskies go well with something like Local Hero because they are pure joy, they are heartwarming. They don’t need tasting notes and flavour descriptors just as Local Hero needs little review, critique or introduction because they are things of joy and beauty. You can drop out of time to Local Hero just as you can close your eyes with your nose in a glass of this stuff and drift away through decades. Its a perfect match, one not easily forgotten, one that will rouse you from dark moods and misery, one on which enduring friendship can be built, one to write home about. If nothing else please see Local Hero if you haven’t already, you’d be a daftie not to.