Food & Beverage
Skailg: A wee livener with… Tom Morton
Meet the family: Glenfarclas and the casks other distillers dream of I
t was a stunning early autumn day in Aberdeenshire and Morayshire. That amazing low yellow light you get in Scotland at that time of year. The leaves just turning. It was 14 years ago and thoughts of pandemics and travel restrictions were the stuff of dystopian science fiction. It was a day I won’t forget. I left Aberdeen at about 7.30 am, heading for Glenfarclas Distillery near Ballindalloch. It would have been a wonderful drive, had it not
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been for the tractors, elderly folk in Rovers doing 25mph in a 60 limit, and overloaded trucks. The smell as you enter Dufftown begins with warehouse whisky, the evaporating ‘Angel’s Share’. But in this, the epicentre of Scottish distilling, you can smell every part of the process - mashing, brewing, even the feinty whiff of hot stills. People who live here must have a ‘resting’ blood alcohol level much higher than normal.
Issue 56
