Mr Bond, I Presume

Two of my favourite things. The big Aprilia outside a whisky bond this weekend. 

Springbank

On a recent holiday I came across the Springbank distillery in Campbeltown. I think I’d driven past it a couple of times already before I spotted this small sign on the wall of a fairly narrow alley.

A wee bit of investigation, and it turned out that the white building you can see on the right at the end of the lane is the actual distillery. 

  
And next door was the whisky bond and bonded warehouses.

Up a lane in the centre of a town was not what I was expecting. It’s all very low key.

Unfortunately, as it was Sunday, the place was closed, otherwise I would have been tempted to take a look around further and I might even have been persuaded to purchase a bottle or two.

Anyway, this is what all of the fuss is about. Lovely stuff.

Highland White Lightning

Nicki & I spent New Year/my birthday at a lodge in Aultbea, in NW Highlands (see map).

Almost next door to where we were staying were the Drumchork Lodge Hotel and the really small Loch Ewe Distillery, although both were closed for the season.

This is all there is to the distillery and bond buildings

However, when I stopped off to take a couple of pictures one afternoon I bumped into the owner of the distillery who had come up to collect the mail and generally check that everything was okay. We got chatting and I persuaded him to open the shop and sell me some whisky.

However, due to the somewhat torturous regulations surrounding the sale of spirits he told me that, although he is licensed to produce whisky at the distillery and store it at the bond next door, he is not allowed to sell any directly to the public. So, to get around this restriction he ‘sells’ it to his wife who is the licensee for the hotel and, as an employee of the hotel, he can then sell it to me. So, into the hotel bar we went.

I ended up getting this miniature of un-matured ‘UisgeBeatha’, which comes in a bottle with a partially hand-written label and is hand-sealed with wax. As it is clear (white) and only four months old you aren’t allowed to call it whisky, just malt spirit. As close to moonshine as you can probably get while keeping everything within the law.

Weekend Roundup

Weekend Roundup 2

And some more...

Happy Birthday, Jack!

Spirit of Adventure II

Many years ago BBC journalist, author, and keen motorcyclist Tom Morton made a trip around all the remaining whisky distilleries in Scotland. That journey spawned first a book, then a radio show, and then finally a television series.

I first read the book years ago and was pleased to discover that Amazon had released an updated version on Kindle format. If you’re interested it can be found here. I thoroughly recommend it to you, especially so as it's retailing at just over a pound (Sterling).

The success of the book led to the TV show, of interest to those of us who rode bikes for the appearance of a ratty old MZ ETZ250 sidecar outfit on prime time television. Tom Morton even joined the MZ Riders Club on the back of his experiences, and later on was the owner of one of the first MZ Skorpions sold in the UK.

The TV show was, as far as I am aware, only shown in Scotland and has never been repeated (I do have a bootleg copy on DVD somewhere should anyone be interested).

As a postscript, the actual sidecar outfit passed through many hands and ended up being owned by a friend of mine who lived near Stirling.