Whisky Galore

[Freelander Sporrano]

Yesterday evening Sten Rune and I had a company outing to Oslo.To be more accurate the Caledonian Society's annual whisky Tasting
http://www.cally.org/
As you can see by the link it was a vertical tasting (Should have been horizontal) only joking. A vertical tasting is tasting whiskys of accending age in our case Talisker 10 ,18, 25 and Distillers edition.Talisker is a unique Distillery as it is the only one on Skye and at least 2 hours with a car to the next Distillery.
This has caused the distillery to develop it's own way of doing things . For example they used to triple distill now they double or distill 2 and a half times due to a unique return system where early .condensation is returned from the pot still arms to be boillied one more time.

http://www.uisge.com/ud/talisker.html

The guest speaker Chris Maile grew up on Skye so he had lots of stories to tell us . One was about the "Dram Line" It was tradition for all the workers to have a Dram before work for the day commenced. There was a tap on the wall and all got a share of a vatted malt. Not only the workers but the villagers too.The old and infirm and thoose with sick children. This queue was quite a long one and it all happened again after lunch and again at knocking off time . Our speakers Grandmother used to queue for her "Sick Children" although the distillery manager thought otherwise. However at a recent 175 year celebration for Talisker Chris spoke to the then manager and told him we was one of those sick children. His granmother gave him "Tallimilk" to drink.A clear case of child cruelty The Dram line was discontinued in the 70's because of health and safety reg,s

Soon we all had our favorites . I found that the older the whisky got the more refined they became. I'm afraid I like the 10 best of all it Exploded on my palate and I can recommend it heartily. The evening was polished off buy a raffle for three bottles of Talisker and a good hearty meal. Not to mention the usual social banter which only corpious amounts of whisky bring out.

As a foot note Chris Organises the Oslo Whisky Festival
http://www.whiskyfestival.no/
So if you're passing stick your nose in .... ;)