No one knows why Bruichladdich whisky tastes the way it does, but plenty of people think they do. In Reynier’s view, the distillery’s proximity to a shallow bay makes a difference. (Bruichladdich is Gaelic for “raised beach.”) When the tide goes out, across the road, algae are exposed to the air, which influences the spirit as it matures, giving it a maritime tang.
One of Bruichladdich’s most valuable local assets is a burly and charismatic gadabout named James Brown, widely known as Farmer Brown. He is sixty years old and vigorous: an ex-lighthouse keeper, a former special constable, a passable bagpiper, and, by all accounts, a pretty good tosser of hammers. …Brown is also the de-facto administrator of Dirty Dotty’s spring, the source of the water that Bruichladdich uses to bring its whisky down from cask strength to bottling strength, which is generally forty-six per cent alcohol. Brown remembers the day when Reynier and a few other Bruichladdich executives arrived on his property with wineglasses, to evaluate the water from his spring. They liked it, and asked for six barrels, leaving Brown to figure out how to get it to the distillery.
—Kelefa Sanneh, writing in The New Yorker about a London wine dealer’s mission to revive the revered Bruichladdich distillery, on the Scottish island of Islay. Sanneh’s piece ran in February 2013.
from Longreads Blog » Longreads Blog http://ift.tt/1J4U0yK
No comments:
Post a Comment