Malt by Writer Paul Carter MD

by Writer Paul Carter MD

I may have mentioned once or twice that, at the end of a day, I enjoy sitting back with a wee dram of liquid sunshine from Scotland. Say what you like about kilts and bagpipes, the Scots certainly hit the bullseye with their national drink. Most of the time I imbibe whatever Coles has on special, mixed with ice and ginger ale. 

Occasionally, however, I enjoy something really special, with a Gaelic name and just a drop or two of water added from a pipette to ‘open’ up the flavour. Which is why, on a holiday in Tasmania some years ago, we stopped off for a tasting at a whisky distillery which we stumbled across on a back road off another back road from nowhere special to somewhere even less well known. It was a great place. They had a spectacular range of single malt whiskies, and one of them particularly tickled my fancy.

‘How about I treat you to that one you particularly like as an early birthday present,’ Gilly had smiled at me and said, and I had readily accepted.

The lady behind the counter carefully wrapped the bottle up in straw and put it in a small wooden box. ‘That will be four hundred and twenty-five dollars,’ she said with a smile and, to her everlasting credit, Gilly neither blinked nor flinched.

Clearly, whisky that costs over four hundred dollars a bottle is not used to quaff the thirst. Nor is it mixed with anything or iced, so I did none of those things. What I did instead, over the next year or two, was to take tiny sips of it and then eulogise about how, just like listening to opera, it transported me to other worlds, and made tingles go up and down my spine. 

But even with taking the tiniest of sips, all good things come to an end and eventually, the bottle was empty. I was feeling a bit sad about it all when suddenly it was full again. Thinking the bottle way too good to discard, that clever wife of mine had gone to the supermarket, got a litre of whatever was the best buy of the week and had filled it up again. It was a brilliant idea and one that we have now repeated over and over. So that I can sip, or quaff, or mix, or chill as the mood takes me, without ever once feeling guilty.

Now that Covid has released its grip on us a little, we had a couple of our new neighbours over recently for dinner. They are both something high-powered in the city, but now working from home. When we had made our introductions, I asked everyone what they would like as a pre-dinner tipple. It turned out that both our guests are whisky people, so I brought out our well-used bottle, and poured everyone a drink. I was on the very point of explaining about our little joke when the husband cut across me. 

‘Now that is fantastic,’ he said as he sipped from his glass, and then picked up the bottle and closely examined the label. ‘It’s not just the taste, with that wonderful hint of blackberry, or even that smooth as silk texture,’ he continued, ‘but you can almost feel the pureness of the stream they have used, and then there’s that depth and richness from being  matured in a barrel previously used for sherry.’

I looked at him wide-eyed and was about to fess up when I glanced across to Gilly. For just a second she looked back at me with a completely expressionless face and then she puckered her brow, ever so slightly, and seemingly casually put a finger to her lips.

‘Well, we certainly like it,’ I turned back to our guest and said. ‘In fact, we like it so much that we would have to find our way back there if ever our supplies started to run low,’ I added, and Gilly suddenly got up and left the room, saying that she had just remembered something she had to see to in the kitchen.