26 October 2006

October

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Thursday 26 October 2006--Happy birthday, Mr Tattie Heid! I pick Andrew up at the hostel in Port Charlotte, and off we go to Bowmore under stormy skies. A tour of the distillery there is our first order of business.

It's just the two of us on the tour. It turns out that Andrew is a winemaker, and I get a fresh perspective on the distilling process through his eyes.

We see the stillhouse and the warehouse before we are offered samples in the makeshift visitors' center (the real one is under renovation). The wind is howling and rain is blowing sideways past the windows as we enjoy our drams at 11:00am. I do not think there can be a better circumstance under which to enjoy whisky, and, even though I've never much cared for Bowmore's product, I quite enjoy a sixteen-year-old cask strength dram that has a wonderfully unctuous texture.

The sky breaks as we drive across the vast bog toward Port Ellen, and then out the road to Kildalton, where we actually get enough sunlight for a pretty good photo of the cross.

We have a warming bowl of soup for lunch at the Old Kiln Cafe at Ardbeg. We don't take the tour there, but have a quick look around for photos. I also pick up a reserved bottle in the shop, an Oogling.

Then it's back across the bog and around the end of Loch Indaal to Bruichladdich for the 2:30 tour. In contrast to this morning's at Bowmore, there are thirteen touring this afternoon. Joanne Brown of the Octomore Browns handles the duties well. Then I take Andrew to the new distillery at Kilchoman for a quick look, just to contrast the tiny operation to what we've seen so far.

As the sun sinks in the late afternoon, we visit Kilnave, on the shore of Loch Gruinart, where thousands of migrating geese are settling in for the evening. We wait patiently for quite some time for the sun to peek out from behind a cloud. It does so for all of five seconds, giving us just that time to catch the evocative shadow of the cross on the face of the chapel.

The day is done, and we return to our respective lodgings to freshen up before meeting at the PC for dinner. After, Andrew has a Caol Ila 18, and says that while he enjoys it very much, he'd dump any of his wines if they showed any similar flavors. He very generously picks up the tab, pints and drams and all. I wish I could have gotten him to Portnahaven, Finlaggan, Jura, the Oa...well, that's another whole day, I guess. I think we did pretty well under the circumstances.

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