| A Wee Dram-amine | | | | By: Darryl Beeson |  Page 1 of 2 next >> |
They don’t call the ocean “the drink” for nothing. My mates and I are motivated more by the peat of the malt than by the pelt of the waves. Our team of three boats, nestled in a hundred boat flotilla, proceeds to seek the finest of Scotland’s single malt Scotches. This is The Classic Malts Cruise of the western coasts and isles of Scotland.
We are the loud, the bedewed, the marines. It is July. And it is ice-cube cold.. Wearing rain gear for obvious reasons and “Wellies” to keep feet warm and dry, our gang of six sail “The Chantilly” from the port of Oban, bound for the Tallisker distillery on the Isle of Skye. Mark Twain once observed that the coldest winter he had ever experienced was a summer in San Francisco. Twain obviously never embarked upon 200-mile mid-summer voyage through the Inner Hebrides of Western Scotland.
Day to day, there were professionally orchestrated tastings above deck when skies were fair, below deck otherwise, and as a treat sometimes ashore visiting individual distilleries.
I am early-on reassigned, or is it that I am shuttled to a multi-ship assignment. The first ship had been a sleek, fiberglass craft. The final destination became the 56 foot Eda Frandsen. Though 65 years of age, this bounty of creaking wood is far from the age of retirement. My former shipmates may have voted me off of the island, fiberglass as it was, because of my snoring. My “sawing” might be more in tune with the Eda Frandsen’s bewailing, moaning timbers. The welcoming captain, Jamie Robinson, is a muscularly honest man educated in the best UK universities, and a disarming cross between Bob Hoskins and Captain Kirk. A gaff-rigged cutter he steers. And he let me steer it a few times myself.
Though most participants sailing in The Classic Malts Cruise are committed members of the sailing community with an additional love of a wee dram, I am, so to speak, an embedded journalist on this multi-destination embarkment. It is true that the older wooden ships moan as they respond to the sea’s massive, derisive duress. The splash of water across the deck, a surprise from a larger wave every ninety seconds or so, is a little un-nerving. The occasionally piercing rain drops are an extreme irritant. So I am told. Being a credentialed and embedded journalist, I file my reports while embedded below deck. in my small bunk area..
A treasure would be a fumbling climb down into the Eda Frandsen’s swift skiff, often averting the obvious landings that are historical or cultural.
If we chanced to be near a pub, we instead quaffed pints of Guinness, more often listening to loud jukeboxes playing U2, rather than bands playing traditional Scottish music as we might have hoped.
One afternoon, we entered the Mull island port of Tobermory, with its waterfront row of yellow, blue, red and white buildings. I noshed upon a hearty local meat pie at an upstairs internet café while checking mail, then gathered with fellow shipmates in the canary-yellow Mishnish Hotel (bed and breakfast goes for $30-$40US a person), where we opted predictably for bitters, stout and gin, pleasured by the land’s firm footing. Before long, we redirected our waning focus upon the Classic Single Malt Scotches, predictably arranged upon the most humble pub’s back bar.
Talisker, Oban and Lagavulin are three of the six classic single malts of Scotland, the others being Glenkinchie, Dalwhinnie and Cragganmore. We discovered through this journey that all whiskies are not the same. The crucial ingredients are malted barley, vital yeast and peat-ladened water.
|
Wine Related Articles 
