what's all this north highlands, east highlands etc nonsense

by **Marvin** » Tue Nov 21, 2006 11:14 pm

ok I am Scottish and most scottish people know that the highlands start from Fort William/Inverness north. Many of the whiskies people describe as "East Highlands" are really in the Grampian region of Scotland, and a lot of the "South Highland" malts are in the Central, Strathclyde and Tayside regions.

There's a map here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regions_an ... f_Scotland

by **Thesh** » Wed Nov 22, 2006 4:07 am

I know, near where I live there is an east LA, a west LA, and a south central LA. People breaking up regions into smaller regions drives me nuts.

by **Deactivated Member** » Wed Nov 22, 2006 7:26 am

Cadenheads started the east/west/north thing, I think. "Highlands" is the biggest category, so they wanted to break it up. It's just a convenient way of pigeonholing things, and really shouldn't be taken very seriously, in my mind.

by **corbuso** » Wed Nov 22, 2006 9:39 am

The division of Scotland was introduced with the wash act and afterwards, the highlands were divided in several regions, because these different regions produced whisky with a "regional" characteristic. This is not really more the case, and just helps to classify the whisky regions. The SWA wants to reintroduce Islay, Campbeltown, Highlands, lowlands and Speyside (?) as AOC.

Corbuso

by **toshie** » Wed Nov 22, 2006 1:33 pm

According to Glengoyne, the Highlands start at its front door.

by **Leither** » Wed Nov 22, 2006 2:10 pm

I work for the tourist board (VisitScotland) and agree that our regional boundaries, in the British Isles as a whole, can be quite confusing for visitors. In my mind the best way to split Scotland is into Lowlands/Highlands/Islands (as that's the way that many visitors look at it) but the geography of our nation means that it is difficult to break up logically into territories.

In fact, our research shows that many residents of England (of whom around half have never been to Scotland) when given a map with no boundaries, find it difficult to draw even where the border between England and Scotland is!

From a whisky perspective they (Independent bottlers etc) have tried to break up the Highlands region into North, East etc to help consumer choice as a whisky from say Fettercairn on the East side of the Grampians is very different from say Clynelish north of the Dornoch Firth.

However if you search on similar 'terroir' threads it is apparent that regional breakdowns, as far as whisky is concerned, are being seen as increasingly sceptical.