by Iain Banks
Back at the shop, I buy a bottle of the fino finish 18-year-old, partly in memory of that spectacular dram out of the barrel at Ardbeg. This is possibly a case of cross-distillery inspiration, given that Ardbeg is owned by the same people.
Glenmorangie is another best-seller; no other malt sells better in Scotland. This makes perfect sense to me, for all my apparent Islay fixation. Once again, I think it’s largely about the sensational skill in the selection and handling of the finishings. Glenmorangie is still mostly matured in oak casks from the Ozarks which have held bourbon for four years, but it bottles at ten, twelve, fifteen, eighteen, 21 and 24 years – plus it has various vintage-dated bottlings. It has Ruby port, dry Oloroso and Fino sherry and Malmsey Madiera finishes (and has had other special finishes, for example in Malaga barrels), plus various other limited editions like the Claret, Tain Hermitage and Côte de Beaune red wine finishes, not to mention the cask-strength unfiltered Traditional. It even has expressions specific to one warehouse; cellar 13, the one nearest the coast.
Heady, almost bewildering stuff. But it’s this willingness to experiment that marks Glenmorangie out as one of the most important and innovative whisky makers, and one of the least stuffy, too. The whisky itself might almost get lost inside this all-over-the-place promiscuity if it wasn’t a beautifully structured, complex and yet delicate dram in its own right. There’s a lightness of touch and yet a strength in depth about Glenmorangie, a sort of finesse in its subtle mixture of flavours that allows it to mix with all these other influences without either bullying them into submission or being over-run by their flavours.
Glenmorangie is unusual in having to deal with atypically – for Scotland – hard water, from the Tarlogie springs. Quite a lot of salt has to be added to make it suitable for whisky production, just as you have to add salt to dishwashers in hard-water areas, and it’s an indication of how the balance of control is weighted between production water and the subsequent influence of the barrels and warehousing that nobody has ever accused Glenmorangie of having more than the faintest trace of saltiness to it, unless it’s a still fairly subtle flavour imbued from that close-to-the-waves cellar thirteen.
A sequence of smart advertising campaigns – the whole Sixteen Men of Tain thing, and the Glen of Tranquillity series – has kept Glenmorangie in the public eye over the years, and its position as one of the market leaders is entirely justified; an unfailingly intriguing and satisfying selection of whiskies. If you were stuck on a desert island and could only drink the output from one distillery, this would have to be prime contender; another might be Bowmore (plus, if you’re me, Laphroaig), though, of course we still have Macallan waiting in the wings.
Perfect Dram? Best Distillery? I may have to widen my brief unilaterally.
I should point out that throughout all this – the last few chapters and the last few weeks – I’m still making my inquiries (discreet inquiries, too, at least by my standards) regarding the whole secret still/peatreek thing. I’m afraid, however, that so far I’m not meeting with much success. Actually so far I’m not meeting with any success. Despite this, I remain undismayed. I have a feeling it’s one of those matters where you work away for ages with no result, no change, no progress whatsoever and then suddenly everything happens at once and it all comes right and you meet with total success just when you least expect it.
Cheerfully unrealistic optimism can be such a comfort.
South across the Black Isle and the Kessock Bridge – a handsome example of a cable-stayed bridge, with an almost arrogant lack of cross-bracing between the towers – through Grantown – stopping for ice creams, because of the heat – then on to our base for the rest of the week.
We’re in chalet three at the Glenlivet Holiday Lodges. Almost disappointingly, the Glenlivet Holiday Lodges really are quite close to Glenlivet, only a couple of miles away from the distillery. There’s a wonderful, very peaceful view to the south west towards the Hills of Cromdale, a bar/restaurant called the Poacher’s Bar with a pool table, and a variety of forest walks starting pretty much from the door step. The track up to the place from the B9009 is a bit rough but the Jag’s old-fashioned, deep-side-walled tyres cope without a grumble. The chalet itself is fine and even has a sauna, not that we use it. Only mobile reception is a problem, and we end up wandering around in the grass outside the chalet waving our phones in the air trying to get a signal. The old red callbox outside the Poacher’s Bar gets used quite a lot as I call home and we try to keep in touch with Jim, who, when we do get hold of him, says he hopes to head back north on the Wednesday.
Steaks at the bar, then a circular stroll along a forestry track where the trees have all been harvested, so that we walk surrounded by the bleached wreckage of stumps and shattered branches. Ben Rinnes rises browny-purple in the north, a swept line of ridge leading to a tipped table of summit.
Dave looks at me. ‘How’s your brain these days, Banksie? Does it work? Is it alert? Up for challenges?’
I groan. ‘Oh, God, you’ve brought that game with you, haven’t you?’
‘Aye! But it’s easy once you get used to it.’
‘Is it still in nine dimensions?’
‘Yeah, but like I say, it’s easy once you get used to it.’
The poison pen method has been resorted to (long story). Wine has been taken. Whiskies are before us. Not to mention behind us, around us and indeed inside us. Our fine and filling meal at the Poacher’s Bar seems long ago now and we’re still drinking and Dave’s giving me a brief run-through of the rules to this game he’s been working on for the last few years; he’s up to about page 21 at the moment (he’s brought a printout of the short version of the rules).
I’m sitting at the wooden table in the chalet feeling a little the better for wear, scratching my head and staring down at the nine, square, seven-by-seven laminated cardboard boards that Dave’s placed side by side on the table’s surface along with all the relevant cards, pieces and assorted gubbins the game obviously requires. This is all very confusing. I’m not at all sure I’ve taken in anything apart from alcohol and smoke for the last half-hour or so he’s been speaking. I become aware he’s just asked me a question. He’s looking at me expectantly.
‘What?’ I ask, smiling reassuringly.
‘You got all that?’ McCartney asks. ‘You ready to play?’
I haven’t the foggiest concept how even to start. ‘Good grief, yes!’ I exclaim, slapping the table enthusiastically. ‘What are we waiting for?’
* * *
Coffee and bacon rolls for breakfast, then into Dufftown (we take a photo at Mortlach distillery), then we take in Glendronach distillery, hidden away off the beaten metalling in a shallow dip between lots of trees and productive-looking fields. We have a natter to a very nice lady called Allison who opens the shop up specially for us. I buy 15-year-old bottlings of Glendronach, Glenburgie, Glentauchers, Glencadam, Miltonduff and Tormore, and a 12-year-old Ardmore. The Glendronach we tried on site (I had but the merest sip, honest) was a rich, sweet concoction, with some peat and smoke and quite a strong sherry finish. Very palatable, and I look forward to making its acquaintance, and that of its companions – all fine, if unexceptional – again when we get to that bit of the cupboard under the stairs in my parents’ house, probably some time in the next eighteen months.
We have a bar lunch in Turriff then swing back to Keith and the Strathisla distillery where we have a sort of self-escorted tour with a handy pamphlet and lots of signs and explanatory posters about the place (though at a fiver a head for do-it-yourself, it might seem a bit steep). Still, it’s an attractive distillery of well-kept old buildings, nicely presented, and there’s a distinct and even opulent Highland country house flavour to the Visitor Centre lounge. You suspect the five quid goes to paying off the investment needed to create all this.
McCartney suddenly decides he’s a fan of the car park; specifically the size of the car parking bays in the car park, which are brightly outlined with smart whi
te paint and Very Wide Indeed; parking spaces you could reverse a Lincoln Continental into with all its doors open and still not hit anything on either side. Well, kinda.
I try to convince him that the weird kink in the Lyne arm of the second spirit still is of more intrinsic interest, but he’s still banging on about how all car parks ought to be this well laid out.
We get to Glen Grant, just outside the town of Rothes, before it closes. McCartney grumbles about the car park not being quite so generously laid out as Strathisla, but somehow life goes on. The walk from the car park to the distillery proper is beautiful and peaceful, under tall mixed trees and in the midst of flowers and shrubs. The distillery buildings are a quiet riot of Scottish Baronial, all turrets and crow-stepped gables. We’re kind of toured-out so we just buy some 10-year-old in the smart, modern, pale-wood-and-glass shop and head back across its wee bridge and up the side of the trickling stream to the Glen Grant gardens. These are quietly gorgeous.
The gardens are set within a small, sinuous glen behind the distillery. They were stocked largely with plants brought from India and Africa by James Grant the younger, who was a major in the army. They were reopened in 1995 after being restored following decades of neglect, and Seagram, the distillery’s owners since 1972, deserve wheelbarrows of praise for what they’ve had done here (they own Chivas and Strathisla, so maybe some of the Strathisla fivers have gone into all this horticulture).
It’s yet another hot day and the slight climb up to a wonderfully gothic circular gazebo on a rise leaves us glad of the shade and a seat, the better to take in the architectural use of antlers and giant pine cones in the building’s roof, which is something you don’t see every day. If it had been cooler and our bellies hadn’t been rumbling in anticipation of the evening meal, I’d have liked to have explored more of the garden, but never mind; definitely worth a visit even if you can’t stand whisky.
If you do like whisky then Glen Grant will probably already be familiar; a light, flowery dram available at as little as five years (especially in Italy – what is it about Italians and very young whisky?). The 10-year-old I bought is sort of firm and nutty and dry as a fino sherry. A perfect mid-afternoon whisky, or with chilled water as an aperitif.
We play Dave’s game, which, when it started out, was based on one of my SF books, Excession, and had the same name. In its latest incarnation it involves this nine-dimensional set of boards and seems to be awfully complicated. I’m drunk and stoned and that surely isn’t helping matters, but even in my present state I have the distinct impression that were I sober I’d still be seriously confused, just by the game. The game isn’t really in nine dimensions – even McCartney isn’t quite that mad – it’s in three dimensions with nine vertical levels. Trust me; this is more than enough to make it so deeply, fractally perplexing that it might as well be in nine dimensions.
‘So it is surrounded?’ I ask.
‘Yes.’
‘But why can’t it move out diagonally?’
‘On its own board or on higher or lower ones?’
‘Both. Troth. All of the above.’
‘Well, it just can’t; that’s the rule.’
‘But things can move diagonally in this game?’
‘Oh, yeah, of course.’
‘Right. They just can’t escape diagonally?’
‘Other things can, just not this. If it could move, that is. Of course it can’t, but if it could, then it wouldn’t be able to. Not with the pieces like this. Do you see what I mean?’
‘Uh-huh.’ I sit back from the table, thinking. ‘May I ask a question, David?’
‘Yeah, certainly, what?’
‘Are you trying to confuse me deliberately or is it just an emergent property of this hideous nonsense you’ve set before us, you mad bastard?’
It’s late on. We are both pretty drunk. Dave raises the bottle of Strathisla towards my half-full glass. ‘Do you want a wee …?’
‘Na,’ I tell him. ‘I’m all right.’
‘Yeah.’ Dave nods. ‘So am I.’ He pours a full measure for himself. ‘But that’s beside the point.’
9: The Awemsys of Azshashoshz
SOMEHOW WE GET up to another great day – and more coffee and bacon rolls – at half-nine despite only getting to bed at five. I feel remarkably fine. We sit on the grass munching rolls, looking at the hills and distant mountains and trying to find a cloud anywhere in the sky.
‘How’s your head?’ Dave asks.
‘Better than it deserves to be.’
‘I was thinking about the game after I went to bed last night.’
I look at him. ‘You were?’ I shake my head. ‘You’re taking this far too seriously.’
‘I think the nine different boards is maybe a bit too complicated.’
‘You will recall that Jim and I were both sceptical.’
‘Yeah, but it was worth trying.’
‘So, back to the single-board idea?’
Dave nods and draws on the first fag of the day. ‘Maybe. With adjustments. Needs more work. I’d still like to try the nine-board idea with three players and simpler rules.’
‘Really?’ I stand up. ‘I shall go and ring Mr Brown and inform him he is required immediately.’
Jim says the crisis is over, he’s free to leave and he hopes to make it to Aviemore on the early afternoon train. We have a few problems with mobiles and staying in touch – though, standing by a roadside trying to electronically top-up my phone, I get to see the steam train on the Strathspey Railway chuff-chuffing past in the sunlight – but eventually we meet up in time for lunch. We bump into the couple my Mum and Dad bought their house off, who retired nearby. Small country.
We return to the Glenlivet Lodges via Dulnain Bridge, trying to see a red squirrel (Les, Aileen and I saw one the week before). No luck on the squirrel front; we repair to Dufftown to check out the local bars for Sky reception because there’s some football game on this evening which might be worth watching (I have no real interest in football, being a Greenock Morton supporter, so I can’t remember which game this might have been). Dufftown rather lives up to its name; nothing much going on, shops very quiet and bars which don’t seem all that friendly – there’s some muttering in one that another bar does have Sky but hasn’t paid the appropriate fee for letting the public watch.
Maybe we were just unlucky. And to be fair, the lassie at the town’s slightly antique petrol station, with whom we established a close relationship over the week due to the fact the Jag combines the thirst of an elephant with the fuel-carrying capacity of a gnat, seemed very nice.
We decide it’s a bit warm for trudging round distilleries and so head back to the Lodges to play pool, lounge in the sun, test out Dave’s simplified game (still confusing), play Grass (it’s a card game), drink and smoke.
Azshashoshz: that etymology in full.
A few years ago now, a bunch of us were visiting Glenfinnan for Hogmanay. We were staying at what became known as the Shilly Chalet – basically a wee fishermen’s hut a ten-minute or so walk from Les and Aileen’s house. The previous day we’d met a slightly misguided English guy on the train up to Glenfinnan. I seem to recall he was called Rollo; if he wasn’t, well, it was one of those slightly eccentric upper-class names very like it. Wore a rugby shirt; very obviously public school. I’m sure you’re getting the picture. Anyway, Rollo – or whoever – had been trying to get to a tiny remote island off a slightly larger but still remote island off a fairly remote bit of the not-really-all-that-nearby mainland.
We’d explained to him that his idea that he could get off in the middle of the night at Lochailort and hitch-hike to this back-of-the-back-of-beyond island was, frankly, daft, so we offered to let him bunk down on the floor of the Shilly Chalet overnight before resuming his journey in daylight, when his chances of arriving at his destination without frostbite or the effects of terminal exhaustion would be far greater. Anyway, Rollo had been waved off on the next leg of his expedition and we’d gone roun
d to the McFarlanes’ for a party. We were all very drunk. Amongst our company was Jim, who has on occasion been known to slur his words a little when he’s drunk. On this occasion nobody could understand a single word he was saying except, for some bizarre reason, me, and so I was translating.
Jim would say something like, ‘Ammeen sjussbeinpoligh ffyimesumbayontray coubeatrai duznhaftibeatray coubeona-buzorsumthin antheyhaven gorraplaystayoffrumabed ffyougotspayone.’
And I’d sit there, frowning mightily with the sheer drunken concentration of it, then nod and say, ‘Jim says, he means, it’s just being polite if you meet somebody on a train – doesn’t have to be a train, could be a bus or something – and they haven’t got a place to stay, to offer them a bed if you have a spare one.’ (At which point Jim would generally nod in confirmation, or sometimes offer a corrolaric explanation if he thought one was required, though this too, of course, had then to be translated.)
This went on for some time and I felt I was doing really well until Jim launched into this long paragraph of barely comprehensible drivel which ended with a sound I just couldn’t make out at all. It was quite an emphatic, climactic sort of sound, or set of sounds, too, and he was obviously very pleased with it as an argument-clinching sentence ender, given the way he nodded and drank from his can with a sort of swagger, so I didn’t feel I could just ignore it. Instead I sort of filed it away phonetically, just as I’d heard it, and started paraphrasing the rest of the paragraph anyway, hoping that by the time I got to the end the meaning behind the unidentified sound would become obvious just by my having had more time to think about it and the context therefore, hopefully, having become clear in the interim. This just didn’t happen, so when I got to the end of the paragraph I abandoned the Clear English I’d been translating into and just repeated verbatim what I’d heard him say in Jim Source Code, which was, as near as I could make out, ‘Azshashoshz.’
