Scotland Part 5: Odds and Ends and Final Thoughts
Whenever I write up a trip, there are always little thoughts or ideas that I’ve noted or written out, that just don’t belong anywhere in the main narrative. So something I’ve started doing is this little coda of stray thoughts, odds and ends, and various other little bits of interest, trivia, or humor that feel worth sharing. There’s rarely any real order to them, but for whatever reason it makes me happy. And being that we’re already [mumbles an alarmingly large number] words into this here travelogue, it seems appropriate somehow that it ends with a bit of rambling and some entirely invented awards for the distilleries we visited. Enjoy.
For being very old, everywhere in the UK was extremely into touchless payments. There wasn’t a single place we went - anywhere - that didn’t accept tap-to-pay. In fact, I think I only used a physical card once, because Apple Pay was so prevalent. From the newest restaurants to barely-standing side-of-the-road shacks, to the guy selling hand-made scarves next to a castle, everyone let you simply *boop* your phone and you were done. And when we got back to the US, the act of pulling out a credit card - or god forbid signing a piece of paper - just feels so archaic now.
Scotland has five suns. I’m convinced of it. It became a literal running joke. Because whenever I wanted to take a photo, I was always shooting directly into the sun. I took 1400 photos - all of them maneuvered around the sun being directly where I wanted the frame to go. Sometimes it was directly above the turret of a castle, sometimes it was directly in the sightline of a mountain or valley. Sometimes I swear it crawled into a pub at midnight just to give some lens flare to a selfie. Regardless - five suns. All the time.
Irn Bru (pronounced “Iron Brew” is apparently the national soft drink. It’s everywhere, and outsells both Coke and Pepsi combined. It’s the color of Cheeto dust and tastes like bubblicious. I had one because … because I had to. It was fine. Not disgusting, but not particularly enticing either. But also, one was enough.
Everyone in the UK was an extremely considerate driver, moving over to let faster cars pass, and generally acting in a remarkably aware and predictable manner. It was so refreshing, if I’m being honest. I grew up in Northern California, where drivers can best be described as “aggressively oblivious,” versus my current Southern California home where it’s just plain aggressive (it took me years to be comfortable doing 80MPH on a six lane freeway with barely ten feet between cars.) I could only wish American drivers were this cognizant of the cars and people around them. Even the speed cameras were considerate, operating in a somewhat generous “averaged speed” between two or three cameras, so that you weren’t ticketed for what might have been a single moment in time.
Roundabouts are fucking brilliant. Seriously, after the first dozen or so, they become second nature, and an incredibly efficient way to get a bunch of cars through an intersection. As long as you know the basic rules of how to position your car for your exit and when to signal, everything mostly runs like clockwork. And again, if you miss, just keep going until you get another shot.
I love cities that embrace their age. Edinburgh was so proud of its age and celebrated it, while London seemed almost embarrassed by it aside from the big attractions. But beyond the tourism buildings (Big Ben, Parliament, etc.) there seemed to be an unspoken sign of apology for the wrinkles and crows feet of the city. Growing old is a privilege.
Every national museum in Scotland is free, but they all offer tap-to-donate stations. I tapped every time. Boop!
Smoked fish stew is delicious every single goddamned time, and I loved how many places had it on the menu. I didn’t always order it, but it was probably my second most ordered dish, after haggis. And every time it made me happy. This might be my new comfort food.
A big trend in distilleries is to offer distillery exclusive bottles. This might be a single cask bottled on site, or something blended with the intention of being offered only at the distillery for visitors, but every distillery had them. These are the only bottles we brought back. It seemed silly to buy a bottle of something that’s available at our local Ralphs or Wally’s Wine, so we decided that we were only buying bottles that couldn’t be found anywhere else in the world.
“Yes, I have one point seven five liters of Scotch whiskey to declare, if we’re including the little tasters.”
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All in all, we visited seven distilleries proper: Arbike, Glenlivet, Tomatin, Clynelish, Talisker, Oban, and Glenturret. Beyond that were innumerable tastings, pairings, and post-dinner nightcaps at local pubs. All but Arbike and Tomatin we were familiar with beforehand, but every one of them had versions expressions we’ve never tried. And as I mentioned above, everywhere had distillery exclusive bottlings, which made for a fun comparison against something known and familiar. Here is how I’ll remember them, in order of attendance:
The Scotch Whisky Tasting Experience: Best non-distillery tasting experience.
Yes, it looks like a tourist trap, given that it’s placed directly next to Edinburgh Castle (like literally touching the castle walls) in the highest tourist foot traffic space in the city. Yes, it feels like a tourist trap when you first walk in, with the disneyland-esque velvet ropes to guide you towards wherever you’re going to stand for a bit. But the best way to describe this is if you combined Mr Toad’s Wild Ride with a junior college course on the history of Scotch.
First, you ride in a Scotch barrel through a 20 minute overview of how Scotch is made, complete with holographic guide and full lighting, sound, and smell sensory cues, and then there are two different interactive educational portions about the history of Scotland, how each region of Scotch differs, and what to look for in each region’s particular expressions. And then finally you end up in the largest Scotch vault in the world, as you take your first taste surrounded by 3500 different bottles of Scotch. Oh, and then you drink the next four in a different and separate room with even more rare Scotches, ensuring you’ve now tried a Scotch from each region side-by-side, while being surrounded by vintage Scotches.
If it’s a tourist trap, then it’s the best goddamned tourist trap I’ve ever been to, and it’s well worth the (frankly minimal) cost to experience what had to be a ten million dollar buildout. It’s a perfect way to spend two to three hours.
~
Arbike: Best view
Somewhere Beth was interested in because of their choice to not make Scotch at all, but to focus on Rye whiskey. (And gin - but everywhere makes gin in the UK. Hell, I’d expect half the pubs we went to had home-made gin on the menu.) Beautiful, and located precisely on a ridge to ensure their massive windows overlook the fields where they grow their rye, and to watch those fields dip towards the nearby ocean, Arbike was an excellent first distillery visit. The location was stunning, but I have to admit that I wasn’t a huge fan of the rye. The gin was good though.
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Glenlivet: Most Beautiful Distillery
Glenlivet was a distillery we knew well (beyond being one of the largest distilleries in the world, The Glenlivet Caribbean Cask is one of our go-to every-day Scotches.) So when we drive by a sign directing us to Glenlivet as we made our way through Cairngorm Park, we made a quick u-turn and drove down a road that could easily have doubled for the last known location of a group of sexy teenagers who don’t survive this slasher flick. Pitted and pockmarked, it weaved through a dark and angry forest and then alongside a river. And just as we were absolutely sure we were 100% lost, the most beautiful distillery I’ve ever seen came into view around the bend.
Perched upon a small ridge between mountain valleys, the distillery itself seems almost impossible within the scenery. Stacked stone and dark wood which seem incongruously held together by huge swaths of windows, it stands apart as light grey and reflections rising from the green hills and blue rivers that make up the entirety of the landscape. Massive in the way that selling six million bottles a year requires, it’s still somehow managed to remain elegant throughout its many expansions. And that feeling is only accentuated when you go inside, where it feels like a mountain cabin and private library came together under lights that (likely intentionally) bathe the scene in a warm yellow glow reminiscent of their Scotch.
There were maybe a hundred expressions to choose from. Flights. Tasting options. Distillery exclusives. And a stunning Scotch library if you wanted to buy damn near any bottle from relatively recently. We sank deep into leather couches and spent our time choosing from the many options. We finally decided upon a flight of single cask Scotches from bottles only sold on-site, and buying one specific bottle to bring home. But simply choosing what to try without threatening alcohol poisoning was an exercise in restraint. Left to our own devices once our order was dropped off, we took our sweet time beneath the exposed dark wood A beams, stone walls, and deeply worn brown leather to enjoy our drinks in a perfect peace.
~
Tomatin: Most authentic tour.
As I’ve said time and again, Scotland understands the experience of experiences. But Tomatin was unapologetic about the fact that we were just walking around a smallish working distillery. No signage for the tourists, and please don’t touch the hot things - they’re hot because we’re using them right now. Go stand over there because if you take a picture any closer to the stills we might all explode. No idea what that does, we haven’t used it in years. That hole in the wall’s for the distillery cats. Wanna smell that? Just open the top and take a whiff, but don’t let your glasses fall in because then we have to dump the whole batch and that’s expensive.
Us being there on a tour felt almost incidental to their daily operations, like they were a little surprised that people showed up that day, and just sort of went with it. But I mean that in the most authentic way possible - there was no pretense or showmanship, it was just honest, genuine, and a little bit spontaneous.
The tasting room was just a conference room to the side of the sales room. I’m pretty sure there was a whiteboard in there. But if you’re actually considering buying anything they make, they’ll open a bottle of whatever you’re looking at and pour you a dram to consider. I highly suggest considering a few options before buying, because they highly suggested I consider a few options before buying.
~
Clynelish: Most tour.
Holy shit was this something you could describe as “experiential.” Go back and read about it in the Inverness entry. There were secret boxes, and a golden key made the whole room transform around us. There were lighting cues and sensory games. It was a whole journey, folks. And all of that was before we even got to the tasting/chocolate pairing.
Just as importantly, the actual tour was incredibly informative and demonstrative - you’d be shocked how effectively you can illustrate the process of making Scotch using some flour sifters, a bunsen burner, and a French press. It was like an eighth grade science project after an escape room. And the entire operation was labeled and lit to ensure every single person on the tour knew precisely what they were looking at at all times.
You can tell that so much thought and energy was put into this tour, from the beginning production through the middle tour and into the end tasting. It was well worth the 2 hour drive away from anything remotely approaching a real town, and a lovely counterpoint to the authentic charm of Tomatin. In the same day, hours apart, we got the most and least tours of the trip - and both were equally enjoyable for completely different reasons.
~
Talisker: Most generous tasting room.
OK, I’ll admit we rushed this one. We got in just a half hour before they closed (at 5pm…) and all we really had time for was a tasting
The grounds outside were lovely, overhanging the loch (which is really an ocean bay - but not Talisker Bay, that’s somewhere else entirely - because all bodies of water making their way inland seem to be called Lochs in Scotland regardless of their relationship to the ocean.) The whole of Talisker distillery seems built upon scaffolding that holds it just a few feet over the water, and lets you walk between what feels like elevated islands overlooking the loch.
The space inside was lovely too, and it felt like a warm and wonderful place to just sit for a couple hours and drink some Scotch. But we couldn’t do that, since we only had 30-ish minutes before they kicked everyone out (again, at 5pm.) But you could tell it was set up for that, and I wouldn’t be surprised if many of the folks we saw were locals just spending time around the giant internal fire pit and having a dram with friends.
Pressed for time, we went down the menu and ordered each of the first five tasting options. Which turned out not to be tasters, but very generous “I don’t know how much an ounce is” pours. Since I was driving at the time, I couldn’t do much more than sip each one. So an hour or so later, with somewhere around four full Scotches in her, Beth got to navigate us back down the single-track backroads throughout rural Skye to get us home that night.
~
Oban: - Best Scotch.
Yeah, I’m biased. And to be honest, I don’t think this was the absolute best dram we had in Scotland (that would probably be one of the special distillery-only Glenlivets) but this was the spot I wanted to go for years. Scotch is personal for everyone, and my dram of an extra old distillers-edition Oban was my victory Scotch for making a cursed trip finally happen. And victory tasted so sweet. Whether or not we actually had better Scotches this trip, this was undoubtedly the best of them all.
The distillery itself is one of the smallest in all of Scotland, with only two stills (which weren’t named Biggie and Smalls or Scoobie and Scrappy - a real missed opportunity I feel.) And because of its age and history, with the town of Oban growing up around the distillery, it sits right in the densest part of town overlooking the bay (an actual bay) making distillery expansion all but impossible.
So it remains a wee distillery, small enough that they no longer even age their spirits on-site, in the heart of a charming little seaside town. And if you walk by at the right time, the sweet and grainy smell of the malted barley boiling just beyond the walls mixes with the smells of the sea air and the day’s catch coming in for dinner service. It’s a wonderfully seductive aroma, and will make you start pausing a little longer whenever you pass by the local real estate displays.
~
Glenturret: Most educational tour.
I mean this in the best ways. It’s a little difficult for me to mentally separate the Glenturret tour with our incredible dinner from the night before, but I’m going to try to do so. By this point, we’d heard the “how is Scotch made” schpiel at least a dozen times. But this was the tour where our guide taught us more than just the basics.
The Scotch Whisky Tasting Experience was a good opener, but our Glenturret tour guide, an absolute Scottish bear of a man named Kenny, got into the science of why the first taste is a bad way to judge, what a drop or two of water does, and how you’re supposed to hold a glass in order to taste more than just the alcoholic vapors. I half expected him to pull out peer reviewed papers as support, which is 100% my kind of people.
Half of the tour was walking around the distillery grounds - which are essentially “buildings hidden in the woods next to a river” - and the second half was spent just drinking a single dram of Scotch and learning about how and why Scotch tastes the way it does, as well as how to best appreciate any given Scotch for whatever it might be. I think out of all of our tours, this one gave me the best information to become a better and more educated Scotch drinker.
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Coda:
There’s something special about finding yourself somewhere and immediately feeling like you belong, even absent actual familiarity. Scotland was like that for me. From the moment we hit Edinburgh, I felt a sense of comfort and place within the city; and that feeling only accelerated as we moved throughout the Highlands. Everywhere we went felt like exploring the parks and streets and woods around your family home.
I’m not one of those people who immediately feels this whenever I travel. Despite loving my time in Florence and France (and occasionally looking up real estate while I was there) I never felt a sense of immediate belonging. (Ditto most other locales around the world that I haven’t written about here.) Genoa and Estonia were closer, but any amount of real consideration would remind me of the numerous steps I’d need to take in order to find daily comfort and become anything more than just a long-time tourist.
But Scotland was different. From the moment we got there, it was different.
Beyond feeling familiar, Scotland felt like somewhere that deserved exploring. We covered over 1100 kilometers in our two weeks in country, and we were still stopping every 20-30 minutes to look at some new piece of “beautiful bullshit.” Again, I took 1400 photos throughout our time there. And with every single one I can - at a glance - distinguish where they were taken. I’ve no doubt we’ll be back for more.
We loved Scotland. We loved our time there and we loved the people we met. We loved the sunsets over the ocean and we loved the peaty smell of the impending rain that never came. We loved the way Edinburgh felt simultaneously old and modern, how Skye felt both lovingly abandoned and vibrantly untamed, and how Oban felt like the Northern California coast fell onto Scotland. We loved the way every experience surprised us and (almost) every meal delighted. We loved the way the country itself seemed to insist, again and again, upon our directed attention just one more time. “This is the most beautiful thing you’ll ever see,” it seemed to say, “and you’d be doing yourself a disservice if you didn’t stop, take your time, and consider this moment.”
And we did. Time and again we did. And the result is that we fell so achingly in love with Scotland that I can’t imagine we don’t find the time to return.
What began as a dying wish, and became an absolutely cursed trip, ended up being one of the most memorable journeys of our lives. And I’m not sure I can end these posts with anything more impactful or profound that than statement. Despite everything that happened, we are profoundly changed for our time there, and if that’s not the point of travel than I don’t know what is.
Until next time…
