On Easter Monday, I raced back from a sunny dog walk with my best friend and her loopy flattie and then a quick workout with my PT, which just allowed me enough time to sit down with John Beattie. John was recovering from a bout of laryngitis, but to be honest, I couldn’t detect this from his usually gravelly tone. I have worked with John in my past incarnation as The Whisky Belle and enjoy his relaxed but inquisitive style of reporting.
“The most important thing,” she says, “is to drink whisky in the way you like it and what’s appropriate to the occasion.”
“When I travelled through Asia,” I recall, “people were drinking whisky with green tea, with ice and with water. And, you know, if you’re in a warm, humid climate, that’s a really pleasant way to enjoy it.”
John was brought up in Malaysia, and he fondly reminisced about his father pouring a dram in the evening, and his lingering memory of his mother was enjoying brandy and ginger ale, smoking Benson and Hedges.
A fellow ‘resting’ artist who worked alongside me at the delicatessen Valvona and Crolla’s had started work at The Vaults, the original home to the Scotch Malt Whisky Society. Instantly, I was enchanted by the Member’s Room with its imposing bar display with the uniform green bottles. The contents of these seemed even more mysterious given the Society’s number code, all adding to the illusive charm of single malt.
“And I just thought this is my world. But they didn’t really have a job. So I said: ‘Well I can work on the bar.’ And I did a couple of shifts, and I made sandwiches for the chef who used to buy cheese from me. And that was it.” Thankfully, the offer of a role to join my friend to deliver tasting events followed after four weeks. And the adventure began.
Our office was at the end of the corridor, so as staff we padded up and down to refill our mugs and discuss the latest bottlings with regular members. The atmosphere was hushed during the morning with only the rustle of newspapers and hiss of endless coffee brewing, and subsequently stewing. My abiding memory of the Member’s Room was the aroma of burnt coffee and whisky mingling together.
There was a strict policy of no mobile phones in the Members’ Room, and when an inadvertent ringtone pierced the tranquillity, disapproving looks would follow. During lunchtime, there was a satisfied rumble of chatter, with members sharing drams with restorative, freshly made soup and hearty sandwiches. The evening traffic would start gently with a variety of disparate pilgrims to the Society. I learned my trade on both sides of the bar, which actively encouraged discussion, disagreement and delight in equal measures about the whisky. I started my education at Society Whisky School with the late Dr Jim Swan and my mentor Charlie MacLean who challenged me to differentiate between yellow and pink sugared almonds, fresh bonfire smoke and smouldering peat fires.
I have always understood that there are rules, but have a healthy disregard for them. John and I discussed that I feel “very passionately about getting people to understand whisky, because there’s an awful lot of supposed rules about liking whisky; and you can only drink it in a certain way at a certain time of day; and you generally have to be a man. There’s a lot of that, which I think you can just sweep out of the way.”
“I feel I almost have a duty to get people to understand and like whisky on their terms,” Annabel continues. “And I take it as a bit of a personal challenge to find a whisky that somebody [who says they don’t like whisky] will like, whether it’s soft and gentle or whether it’s a big smoky, peaty monster. There’s something in there for everybody.”
I’ve always been conscious of having no training to educate an audience about whisky. I’ve worked with enough scientists, writers and industry boffins to fuel my imposter syndrome but years ago a colleague suggested that enthusiasm and passion were my qualifications. I wasn’t shackled with the necessity to impress my listeners and instead I genuinely like to find the key to unlock their understanding and appreciation of what sits before them in their glass.
If it’s in your glass, it’s your whisky, was my mantra.
I invited cheese makers to the chaos of the shop at weekends and delighted in the epicurean adventure I was on. I harbored a pipedream of tending to a few goats and sheep, perhaps a Jersey cow and making cheese. It never happened. All roads lead to The Vaults and I tumbled down the rabbit hole of whisky.
As I planned my first Members tasting, I drew on my foodie background and suggested pairing the five cask strength, hand-poured drams with some cheese. Twenty-five years ago, this was unheard of, you might be lucky to have an oatcake to nibble on as you tackled the glasses of glinting liquid. In the interview, I explained that bringing food to the table took away some of the fear factor, and helped audiences to find parallels in describing the characteristics they found in their cheese mirrored what emerged from the glass.
I had prepared John a small picnic containing three whiskies to pair with cheese, chocolate and salami which he described as ‘incredible’.
The first was an exclusive small batch expression from Clynelish Distillery, bottled by Royal Mile Whiskies. I have a real soft spot for Clynelish, both young and old. My mother used to arrange the flowers at St Giles Cathedral and as a child I’d dally up and down the aisles absorbing the aromas of polished wood, beeswax candles, stiff chrysanthemum and dusty leatherbound bibles. Older expressions of Clynelish take me there instantaneously. We sampled the younger sibling who had the trademark waxy, flinty, citrus fruits and a creamy sweetness. I’d paired Clynelish successfully in the past with the ‘crumblies’ Kirkham’s Lancashire, Appleby’s Cheshire and introduced John to Gorwydd Caerphilly. My aim is to find balance and parity, to complement and enhance. The cheese yielded lively lemony flavours with a creamy mouthfeel, and hinted of earthy mushroom compost.
I find it challenging to not include a Glenmorangie expression in a tasting, and Quinta Ruban is a faithful and flirtatious friend. During my tenure, one of my favourite tasks was to don my steel-toe caps, head to the warehouse and nose the newly arrived port pipes which would be filled with matured spirit for its extra maturation. The huge casks smelled heady with red florals and cocoa beans.
I had chosen Alter Eco Peruvian chocolate with flavours of red berries and an intensely dry finish. Perfect bedfellows. The Glenmorangie delivered a bundle of mint chocolate, crystallised orange with pepper in the finale. Finish can be overlooked in appreciating whisky; Quinta Ruban is like velvet.
The third pairing was Ardnamurchan Sherry Cask Release which packed a leathery boxing glove punch of Pedro Ximénez, umami meatiness and beach bonfires. I’d recently discovered East Coast Cured virtually on my doorstep which was established by Steven and Susie Anderson. In ‘Salamiland’ they produce among other cured meats, Kielbasa which is seasoned with caraway and smoked over cherry wood. The pairing was sublime. The whisky is oily and elemental, the salami dry and aromatic.
We met (virtually), we nosed, we tasted and we shared a collective, in John’s words a passion that sometimes transcends vocabulary, and can only be expressed in simple three letter utterance: “Mmm, mmm, mmm…”
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