whisky time
Charlie pointed to the laminated flavor map on the bar. Dots representing whisky distilleries freckled an outline of Scotland, and thick black lines divided the land into quadrants according to four distinct flavors and geographies. Smokey is the flavor in the north, where distilleries use peat to fire their heaters. Coal replaced peat in the south, when mines were discovered in the nineteenth century. So southern distilleries developed different flavors, and they call this whisky Delicate. The west is Light and the east is Rich, but I can’t remember why.
I sipped Caol Ila. When my eyes closed, I was blazing around on a tractor, mowing a lawn that had caught fire. According to the map, my shot was from the smoky north. According to the bottle it was 70%. My eyes teared and my tongue tingled. Whisky tasting was the final stage of the tour through the distillery. I loved the tour and wanted to honor it by savoring the whisky and discussing its nuanced tones and finishes with our tour guide, Charlie.
Charlie wore a red wool crewneck and indoor-outdoor bifocals. Sparse gray and white stubble covered his chin. I watched his whiskers bob up and down as I studied his mouth, struggling to understand his Scottish brogue. He recited whisky’s history and the distilling process. We followed him past water heaters, grain sifters, vats with spinning blades, shoots for alcoholic porridge sludge, and copper vases—reading Glenkinchie—where the good stuff boils off and into oak barrels. After ten years in the keg, tourists sip and purse their lips and tell Charlie what a charming tour guide he is.
Charlie lives off of this whisky-making cycle. So do the cows in the fields and the fish in the streams. The distillery is located in East Lothian, a fertile corner on the east coast of Scotland. It is prime land for growing the wheat, maize and barley needed to create the national beverage. When maltose is extracted from the grains and mixed with yeast, it is left to ferment and becomes alcohol. The unlikely byproduct of this process is a giant’s bowl of hot cereal. Instead of dumping it into the landfill, the company sells the breakfast food as cattle feed. Charlie thinks these are probably the luckiest and happiest cows in Scotland, but they may not pass the sobriety tests. The plant’s water also flows full circle. From the well, it winds through pipes and pots, heating and cooling, and empties into treatment pools until it is safe to release back into the streams. East Lothian fishes may also be the happiest in the country.
At eleven in the morning, the flowing process of distilling appealed more than the sharp punch of straight whisky.
Meg, our Scottish grandmother, drove up the coast towards Edinburgh castle. We passed grassy dunes and handmade stonewalls protecting fleecy sheep and wobbling lambs. On the water, a barge slugged east towards the North Sea. In the car I felt like a drunken slug. The morning’s Full Scottish—eggs, blood sausage, fried scones, toast, tomatoes, coffee and juice—anchored me to the back seat. But the boat triggered Meg’s memories of her late husband Art.
Art Ennis served in the U.S. Merchant Marines during World War II. After traveling the world and its seas, he traded his sextant for a bottling business. He raised a family in New England and his company grew. Late in life, he moved to North Berwick in East Lothian and met Meg in a bookstore on High Street.
The barge disappeared behind a dune, but Meg was still telling the story of young Art, pulling into his ports of call, only to learn that other U.S. ships were going down. He couldn’t know why his classmates from Kings Point drowned at sea as he sailed from coastal town to coastal town. Years later, he and Meg toured the old Academy. A young man at the information desk asked for Art’s information with disinterest and without eye contact. When he mentioned 1944, the man stood and gave the veteran the full salute. Few from Art’s graduating class survived the war.
Meg’s lyrical stories swirled with rich whisky and rolling landscape, and turned my imagination into a snow globe. Through white flakes of time, I could see the handsome man fifty years ago. He navigated currents and foreign languages with grace and bravery. He nursed his first wife when she was dying of cancer. Art befriended Scotland, and its people were proud to be his friend.
Bouncing around in the back, my breath was still burning from Glenkinchie. It passed from the fiery depths of my nose and warmed my upper lip in soft, rhythmic puffs. The barge had long disappeared, but I was still trapped between the misty world of Meg’s memories and the currents of Scotch whisky.
Perhaps it was the snow globe effect or the shots of Scotch, but at this moment I was so inspired by the optimistic gaze of my Scottish guides. I recalled Charlie adjusting his glasses as he told me his good news: the new factory was ninety-five percent self-sufficient. For Meg, the worst thing wasn’t that her husband passed away, but the possibility that they never would have met.
