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Welcome to a landmark issue. A milestone. When Whisky Magazine was launched there were many blinkered sceptics – you know who you are – who asked “what on earth will you find to write about? Is there enough to regularly fill a magazine?”
Welcome to a landmark issue. A milestone. When Whisky Magazine was launched there were many blinkered sceptics – you know who you are – who asked “what on earth will you find to write about? Is there enough to regularly fill a magazine?”
Well, with the combined support of our loyal readers and the industry as a whole as well as some first-rate writers and editors, I trust we have silenced the doubters by now.
A lot has happened in the world of whisky in the last five years and this issue will take a look at the past, present and even try to predict the future for our favourite drink.
At the time of writing, I am delighted to have fulfilled a personal ambition. Even before the launch of Whisky Magazine I had been a fan of Highland Park. But, despite trips to numerous distilleries all over the world, I had never made it to Orkney.
Well, it’s just not the sort of place you drop into on the way to somewhere else. Unless you are Her Majesty’s Royal Navy, I guess.
I first tried to set up the trip when I was Editor of the magazine. By the time I finally made it there, I was publishing director and was accompanied by the Editor. Which, in effect, made my trip a pilgrimage rather than a press trip. So I felt like a bit of a makeweight.
The advantage was that, rather than asking pertinent questions, trying to catch people off their guard and looking in dark corners for ways to keep the conspiracy theorists happy, I could relax and enjoy the splendour of Highland Park in particular and Orkney in general.
Investigative journalism? I think not. An increased understanding and awareness of whisky and culture? Absolutely. Orkney has the most fascinating history. The Neolithic village of Skara Brae, astoundingly well-preserved given that it is 5,000 years old (that’s right, older than the Pyramids, older than Stonehenge), gives us unique evidence of how our ancestors lived.
The remarkable standing stones of Stenness and the Ring of Brodgar are testament to the ingenuity of man. The amazing 12th century Cathedral of St Magnus is a vast structure of great beauty seemingly anomalous in a place as small as Kirkwall.
Scapa Flow features heavily in the critical military conflicts of the 20th century from the scuttling of the German fleet at the end of World War I to the sinking of The Royal Oak by a U-boat in 1939.
Not to mention Cameron winning the UK’s favourite reality TV show Big Brother.
Doubtless, I have made this point in this column before. But, at the risk of boring you… Whisky is a cultural product. You have to understand how and why a whisky fits into its environment to appreciate it more fully.
A scientific approach to the appreciation of whisky can take place in your living room with a range of bottles. However, whisky is beyond science.
I will now think of the high winds of Orkney whenever I drink Highland Park. I reminiscent to my ears of Scandinavia, and the stories told by Cyril the kilnman of winds of over 120 miles an hour in 1952.
I will remember the ghosts of Skara Brae and the beauty of the Italian chapel. Because that is what whisky is about. And that is why we will not run out of things to write about.
