It appeared out of the earth like some doomsday bunker, the Macallan Distillery.
“I can’t friggin’ park this thing,” I said to Kristen in the lot, almost five years ago today. We agreed I deserved a trip for my thirtieth, and when asked where, I had the answer rather quickly, entering a kind of actual manhood — not like the manhood achieved at thirteen at my bar mitzvah, an age when a boy is so far from manhood the whole concept feels like a typical Jewish joke (Shlomo, with the beginnings of acne on his cheeks and a prepubescent mustache above his upper lip, became a man that day, etc.). Now, on the actual approach to manhood, I entered the metaphorical Man Cave, the world’s Scotch Room, straight from the source.
“How the —” still trying to park. I edged the rental car forward a smidge, back again, constantly banging my right elbow into the driver’s door. Yes, the right elbow, into the driver’s door, the funny bone ringing on me like a tuning fork, sending out an SOS frequency — American struggling overseas!
“I have to admit defeat,” I said. “I can’t park this thing.” You see, the car is backwards out here, flipped around — built for the opposite side of the road, as though the plane ride was not just a leap over the Atlantic but more so an intergalactic space miracle where the world sort of looks the same but the stakes are all shaken about, switcheroo’d. I kept searching for the gearshift with my right hand, but kept only finding wall.
“Put it in park and get out,” Kristen said to me, finally. I was glad to hear it. I banged my elbow into the door once more for good measure, realized again it was all wall to my right, and lifted my left arm awkwardly. It was like trying to write my name in cursive with the opposite hand, squeezing meekly on the gearshift button to move it up to park. It felt heavy as a dumbbell in the wrong hand.
“I just couldn’t do it,” I said, shrugging my shoulders, as we passed each other behind the car to switch roles. And she parked it in-between the lines in seconds, yet another blow to the ole masculinity.
Slàinte Mhath
There is no greater apogee for spirits than scotch. It sits sprawled out on its iron throne with bourbon, mezcal, and gin at its feet — the other spirits crawling amongst the proletariats out in the square.
Known for its peatiness, that fire, that smoke, it hits you at once and then sneaks up on you once more like a welcomed visitor who left but came back because they forgot something, and you are glad to see them again. Scotch must be aged at least 3 years, but the sweet spot is 12-18, with the more rare older scotch growing into a mellowed malt of mythical magnitude.
At the Blair Athol distillery, I asked the tour guide after a taste test: “If they’re mainly peating the scotch in the Islay region, why does it still have a bit of that smoke, that fire behind it out here?” Lagavulin being, probably, the most commonly known Islay dragon; if alcohol is an acquired taste, Islay scotch is an acquired taste for those who have already acquired one for alcohol.
The guide waved her hand out towards the shimmering fields and the flowing river running along the distillery. “It’s in the land,” she said. “The air, the wind, the earth.”
We went to Tomatin at an Uber driver’s suggestion (heed the local’s advice, less the internet), a distillery where everyone lives on site and is essentially family. Now owned by some big Japanese operation, they’ve upped the marketing a bit. A grizzly old Scotsman leading the tour here, with a constant smirk on his face, had us try the beautifully-branded stuff with a level of sarcasm. “They’re calling this one Cù Bòcan,” shaking his head. “What will these marketers come up with next?” You’re telling me, pal.
At Dalwhinnie, we tried our best to not lose our hats and scarves, fighting our way inside, where an employee mentioned the site doubled as a meteorological station for its high altitude, the highest, in fact, of any working distillery in Scotland. It could be called Dalwindy, with frigid gusts making the tasting inside that much more warming to the soul.
We got tours of Aberlour (bare bones scotch-wise, a favorite of mine, though not much of a story to tell of the place, besides a lovely waterfall on the grounds), Glen Grant (“any Glen ya got”), bayside Oban, arriving — thanks to Kristen’s capable driving — at the main attraction: Cardhu, the heart and soul of the old reliable amber restorative: Johnnie Walker Black.
Besides the Johnnie Walker sign out front, you’d barely know there was so much money behind the place — it was like someone’s cozy basement inside. Granted, Johnnie Walker is a blend, and Cardhu merely one single malt in it. But we were still surprised to be welcomed as possible home invaders.
Once it was known that we came in peace, we got the full tasting, and even Kristen was able to join in this time. The drinking and driving laws, unlike in America, are commonsensical here, i.e. you just can’t do it. Not a drop. So Kristen, up until this point, had been packing to-go drams in tiny vials that ended up filling the trunk of the car like we were bootleggers of some illicit eyedrop formula making a run across a border. But our bed and breakfast was just down the dirt road from Cardhu, and we cheered a slàinte mhath to thirty — and to becoming a man, whether I liked it or not.
An Invitation
Thinking we would make some headway on those to-go wee drams in the room of our bed and breakfast, we were surprised to be presented with an opportunity to be social.
The owners invited us to dine with the other guests staying there that evening, an older couple of refined taste and social caliber — the man a robust German, the woman from England. At dinner, the man, who I will call Rolf, which now — in memory — sounds more right as his name than his real one — offered up a bottle of champagne to pair with the feast. After we politely declined — this felt socially accurate to do — we eventually acquiesced.
Following some humdrum talk about the where, when, how, and why of things (“Oh, New Jersey, how interesting,” etc.) we got onto scotch. Evidently, people visit Scotland for other reasons — there is also the golf, and the haggis, or sheep’s offal, an integral quadrant of the full Scottish breakfast, which is not an actual reason to travel here, but a unique aspect of it, something I do try but Kristen does not — at least I have that going for me on a masculine front.
There are, also, people who just go places because they saw a screensaver once with it in the background and thought it looked nice, or watched some Hallmark movie that made the place look movie-set beautiful. All this is to say, it came as a happy surprise to Rolf when he heard we were on something of a distillery hop.
Towards the end of a fine meal, we were invited to join Rolf and the inn owner’s son-in-law (a bar manager at Glenfiddich, which was just down the road; in Speyside country, these renowned distilleries known the world-over are remarkably all just down the road), for a scotch tasting, when we would find out just how little we actually knew about the finest stuff in the world.
Cask Strength
“I see you’ve brought some of your own,” Rolf said at our arrival in the inn’s small library that evening.
“Yeah,” I said, scanning the countless bottles at Rolf’s feet, recognizing some names, some not. “Nothing special. Just some we got along the way… probably nothing like what you have there.” What were there, thirty bottles? Were they going to try all of them?
“Is that the Blair Athol Flora and Fauna?” Rolf said.
“It is,” I said.
“I haven’t had that one yet. You were over there?”
“In Pitlochry, yeah,” where we did a non-scotch related activity, actually — the Enchanted Forest.
“Please, sit,” Rolf said.
Kristen and I sat on a loveseat, Rolf and his British bride in chairs closer to the fire. “And what else is there that you have? A Dalwhinnie?”
“The 15, yeah. It’s so windy there, they can call it Dahlwindy,” a joke that either didn’t land or was not taken as humor in the slight transatlantic language barrier of tone and intent.
“Very good scotch.”
“And this Johnnie Walker Sweet Peat — got it at Cardhu today.”
“They’re peating a blend now, are they?” Rolf said, smirking quaveringly.
“I guess so.”
Rolf’s face changed demeanor almost at once here — from nearly chaotic exuberance to pained self-reflection. “We’re just waiting,” he said. “Shouldn’t be long,” hands reaching below him, moving the tops of bottles pointlessly, nervously. “Doug—” also not the real name of the Glenfiddich bar manager, though it feels right. “— should be here any minute. Whenever I’m in town, he stops in for a tasting. Usually brings something quite formidable.”
“I hate to intrude on a tradition,” Kristen and I said in various ways, quite punctiliously we thought.
Rolf stared at us a moment before saying, “No — no, no. Absolutely not. Just the opposite. Yes — no. It’s simply your lucky night…”
A small bald fortysomething walked in carrying more than his weight in scotch whisky. In every size bottle imaginable, too, including what almost looked like a thimbles’ worth — a deep reddish hue.
“You run the bar where?” I asked when the first dram was poured out.
“Glenfiddich,” Doug said and looked to Rolf.
“One of the few not owned by Diageo,” Rolf said and laughed harshly. “And whatever it is that owns Macallan these days,” shaking his head vociferously.
“The Disneyland of scotch,” Doug said, though in a more sensible temperament it seemed.
“I think we’re headed there tomorrow,” I said, where I would not be able to park.
“Certainly go,” Rolf said. “But if you buy, you’re buying stock, man. Their 18 is a fine scotch. For a long time it was my go-to. But the pricing has gotten out of hand. You’re buying stock, man.”
“They didn’t lay enough down,” Doug said as some kind of clarification.
“They didn’t what?” I said.
“They didn’t lay enough scotch down,” Dough said, “so they hired marketers to create the Fine Oak Series and all that nonsense.”
“Rob’s in marketing,” Rolf said. “And he has just turned thirty.”
“It is good marketing, Macallan,” I said.
“Exactly,” Rolf said. “And that’s what you’re paying for.”
“Ask for Greg,” Doug said. “At the Macallan bar. Tell him Glenfiddich is giving you a taste of their thirty for your birthday, on the house. See what he does for you.”
“Are you really?”
“Come by tomorrow.” And he would.
“Wow, thanks,” I said and felt about fifteen.
“Anyway,” Rolf said. “Shall we?”
First up was a Glenfiddich 26, aged exclusively in ex-bourbon casks from the Kelvin Cooperage in Kentucky.
“I’m fascinated,” I said, “by the American connection to scotch.”
“They’re from New York New Jersey,” Rolf said to Doug.
“This here has a big bourbon influence,” Doug said. “There’s apple and vanilla there right up front.”
As a sidenote, the American influence is due to old labor laws in the U.S. A barrel can’t be re-used, to keep coopers in business, so Scotland buys them and ages their scotch in bourbon barrels, providing key components of flavor.
“The apple and cream and nutmeg is it — that’s on the finish,” Rolf said, sighing big, resting a palm on his belly.
I still hadn’t taken a sip.
“Custard, some barrel char on the end there. God man,” Rolf said, spinning his glass around.
I sniffed at the dram glass intimately, then finally drank. It was good. I said, “Wow — that’s good.” I couldn’t think of anything else to say. Nutmeg? Barrel char?
Smoky — this is why I fell in love with scotch. The smokiness. That first hit of Johnnie Black back in college, like a flavorful, somehow delicious gasoline that somehow warmed your entire insides in less than one second.
I began to sweat, realizing my consensus was all done — complete at “good.” I had no obscure fruit or legume flavor to offer up. I went ahead and continued to smell the scotch incessantly, the droplet that remained in the dram glass, if there was any left at all. If I went on smelling it, I figured, it must mean I was in self-reflective awe of the stuff and was simply at a loss for words.
At which point Rolf mercilessly brought out a series of cask strengths.
“Straight from the barrel,” Rolf said in a low growl. “This is the stuff — this is the stuff you pull out a cigar with, pour a double, and put on a nine-hour black and white documentary.”
I laughed but didn’t know if I was supposed to.
Cask strength — undiluted. The strong stuff. 50, 60 percent. Sometimes more. Purest whisky.
We tried a Mortlach, an Aberlour, a Glenlivet, a Glengoyne, a Glenfarclas.
“If you didn’t eat,” Rolf said of the almighty cask strength, “you’d taste it for the rest of the day. Possibly days. Like syrup, falling slowly down a tree… like so,” his fingers moving gently along his tree-trunk neck.
“It’s amazing,” I said this time after taking a slow sip of the thick extra-strength stuff, lingering densely on my lip. “Whoa,” I added.
We tried more regular strength scotches after that — a rare eighteen here, a thrilling twenty-five there — before Rolf and Doug gazed expectantly at the bottles I brought along.
“I’m embarrassed,” I said of them, the Johnnie Walker a sad sight, like a bottle of apple juice in between my feet.
“Oh, no, man,” Rolf said, shaking his head vigorously. “I’ve been meaning to try that Flora and Fauna.”
“Well let’s start there,” I said.
Rolf drank it down and seemed to somehow lick his own tongue. An event occurred inside his mouth to gather up the tasting profile of the scotch. “Yes, now,” he said. “That’s good, isn’t it?”
Formed as a question. And no analysis of taste. No citrus kick there at the end. No lemony this. No pomegranate that. No dark chocolate undertone on the finish.
“It’s a good series,” Doug said, referring to the Flora and Fauna as a whole.
“We like this one a lot,” I said, “I get molasses. Apricot on the nose.”
“Very good,” Rolf said, nodding quickly. “Very good.”
We reluctantly tasted the Johnnie Walker Sweat Peat next, which I found to be a revelation. Then we routinely went through the Dalwhinnie. And then Doug brought out the smallest bottle of them all, held high for all to see in the flickering light.
Doug shot glances at everyone skittishly. Rolf’s eyes went big and he said, “Come on, man.”
“Is it really expensive?” Kristen said.
“Not on the market,” Doug said cryptically and opened it, twisting once on the top. There might have been three or four drams total in it.
“Let’s go, man,” Rolf said, his voice as low as it had been all night.
“DCS exclusive,” Doug said, eyes darting about, landing on Rolf, assessing the fitful German. Rolf slammed on his knee with a jubilant fist and then, smiling eerily wide, hyperbolically shot out his arm, holding his empty dram glass out like a privileged child who has been made to wait.
“Let’s go, man,” Rolf said. I figured we must have all been stupidly drunk by this point. The fire looked big back there, in triplicate, past Rolf’s flickering face, now attentive to this thimble stuck in time.
“DCS?” I said.
“Malt master at Balvenie,” Doug nearly whispered, a world-class distillery owned by the same group that owned Glenfiddich.
“Ah,” I said.
“Single cask,” Doug said.
“Red, man,” Rolf said.
“Ex-Madeira,” which is to say — not American, but the other way they do it — Spanish wine casks.
“Not for sale, at all?” I said.
“I’m surprised they gave me this much,” Doug said.
When everyone had a wee wee dram, Doug looked around the room and said, “No Instagram of course. None of that. If I see this dram out there, well you know… I’ll have to kill you.”
“How about our Shutterfly book?” Kristen said, comedically-timed perfectly, I thought.
“Look at that,” Rolf said. “Dahh,” tilting the glass and holding it high to the light before drinking it. “Would I murder a man for a bottle of this stuff? Good God, man,” sweating steadily from his forehead now. “Would I murder a man…”
I drank and managed to add, “Fine stuff… damn good stuff.”
Pining for America
Once Kristen got us parked, I strolled confidently up to the skybar at Macallan the next day, trying to make up for lost masculinity, left behind in the parking lot.
“Doug from Glenfiddich gave me a thirty on the house for my thirtieth — he told me to ask for a Greg and to see what you guys would do for me.”
“Nothing,” the bartender said, kicking my masculinity to the curb again, and we walked away to sit down after ordering a flight. Depleted, the scotch now tasting heavy and dense on my tongue after so many ice cube-less drams, I stared out of the floor-to-ceiling windows onto the endless Scottish landscape stretching beyond the bunker we were now in.
Then the bartender appeared before us after a few minutes, carrying something, and said, “This is what we’ll do for you.” A distillery-exclusive cask strength. And I have to give it to ole Rolf — without eating for several hours afterwards, that thing climbed down my neck like a sloth.
But before our flight home, back in Edinburgh, my tongue couldn’t take it any longer.
“A Balvenie,” I ordered at a bar. “Or no — a Macallan. 12. But rocks, please. On the rocks. In like a rocks glass.”
“I see you’re ready to go home,” Kristen said when the bartender walked away.
“My mouth — my tongue. I can’t stomach it straight anymore. It lingers. Like lead.”
“Your mouth is American.”
The waitress brought me a dram of the stock-option Macallan in the usual dram glass with a big snifter on the side, filled to the brim with ice.
“You know,” I began, “every distillery we went to all said the same thing, like they go through the same training: However you drink scotch whisky is the right way to drink scotch whisky. But they’re lying.”
I tried not making a display of it — neither anger nor humor at this blatant ridicule of the typical American needing his ice, but I couldn’t help myself. I took a couple of ice cubes and squeezed them into the tiny dram glass and drank, letting out a nice big sigh for the room to hear.
“God that’s good,” I said. And what else is there really to say?