As easy as Alpha, Beta…
Dave Broom launches the resistance against the whisky terroiristes
Apparently supermarket lighting is engineered to make us blink less frequently, inducing a trancelike state which makes us more amenable to
suggestions. I suspect a similar thing goes on in airports.
Being in transit makes you do one of three things: sit in silence in the bar, fall asleep or start shopping. I tend to do the last. Thatâs how, when I was wandering aimlessly through Birmingham airport recently, I picked up a black and pink leaflet which proclaimed âAlpha Whisky Bravo.
Discover Whisky.â Alpha is the duty free franchise operator at this and other United Kingdom airports. I began reading it. This is how it started: âWhisky. You either like it or you donât.â Well, bang goes any chance of attracting the mildly curious.
It didnât get much better, being cluttered with inaccuracies: Canadian bourbon; monks whose official duty it was to distil the barley; whisky being made from water, barley and peat; single malt âuses only one malted barleyâ; apparently in a blend: âthe higher the blend percentage the higher the concentration of grain whiskies in the blendâ. If you can work that last one out, please do let me know.
Malts are broken down by region. Lowland malts are âclean and simpleâ, Speysides are either âelegant and spicyâ, or ârich and fruityâ, while those from somewhere called Isaly are âdemanding [of] an acquired palateâ.
It was the description of the Highland region which brought home how outmoded this way of talking abou.....
To read the rest of this article you can buy this issue
or subscribe to Whisky Magazine to have every issue delivered direct to your door.
You can unlock and read this entire article with 1 of your community tokens by clicking here.
By Dave Broom
Section : A dram with Dave Broom
Page number : 12
