Oh Caledonia

Turns out there is a Caledonia society here in Blantyre & we were invited along to its whisky tasting evening on Friday. Unlike my ex-pat relatives I was never really that into Braveheart, shortbread and 'I belong to Glasgow' (though I like to think that I do). Now, I LOVE IT. Absence genuinely does make the heart grow fonder, even A is beginning to acknowledge that Scotland “sometimes, in someways, might be alright”.

Sob, Scotland is brilliant, sniff.

The evening was so well done. Tracing the route through the Jacobite rebellion we tried 11 different whiskys. It was in Ryalls, the big posh hotel, and we could have been in the Thistle or the Hilton or any of the places we've been to graduation balls and weddings at home. There were about 50 people there and I only met 7 Scots - I take that as evidence that Scotland is, in actual fact, brilliant and everyone wants a piece (or at least to be invited along to the party).

At first we dutifully filled in our scoring charts, measuring colour (towards amber or straw?), nose before and after dilution (smoky, spicy, caramelly, and peaty were always safe bets) and then the taste. Before long this had descended into a series of ticks and smiley faces and I decided that Talisker is the malt for when you've had bad news, Macallan was probably the best, Glenmorangie reminded me of my Grandfather and Glengoyne, well, it was an outright winner for me.

Controversially they also had Jack Daniels, but that was towards the end of the evening and we had to give the American guests something (a bottle of coke to make it palatable). Brilliant evening, let's see how long we can resist being co-opted onto the committee and having to sort out St. Andrew's Day.

F x
PS – We observed an uncanny correlation between the Jacobite army's stop overs at some of the better distilleries and absolute gubbings by the English.