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“Medium-bodied, zesty, a trifle herbaceous” - wine lovers have an arsenal of tasting terms at their disposal. Yet lyrical language doesn't require wine for inspiration; it works just as well on whisky.
Visitors to Edinburgh can prove it by venturing a few miles north to the old port of Leith, headquarters of the Scotch Malt whisky Society. Here, in agreeably genteel surroundings, connoisseur tasters of pure, single-malt Scotch whisky use terms such as marshmallow, buttery, sulphur, seaweed, stewed prunes, briny, bitter herbs, vanilla, truffly and even humbug to communicate the spirit's subtle flavours.
A few years ago, I set out for the Society's headquarters -- a four-storey wine warehouse dating from the 14th century -- in the company of Edinburgh lawyer David Harris. Back in the early 1970s, Harris and I and a few others shared a cheap old house in London's Angel district. He has long-since returned to Edinburgh to practice and he knows Leith well. As our taxi sped through Leith's damp and glistening streets by night, Harris provided a quick summary of the town.
"Leith-sur-Mer, that's the phrase property developers use now, but
usually tongue-in-cheek," he observed, peering into the rain-swept
murk.
"A few yuppies have moved in, but the place is still far from gentrified.
There's some seafood restaurants and nice places to eat hidden away out
there, among the decaying squalor of attempts to house the poor. Leith
retains a different character from Edinburgh. It's down-to-earth. It doesn't
suffer any form of snobbery."
Leith, home port of the Firth of Forth fishing fleet, remains defiantly working class. It has never recovered from the closure about 15 years ago of its biggest industry, the Robb Caledon shipbuilding yard. Until the mid-1960s (when urban planners gutted part of the district to erect housing blocks), Leith was a robust, thriving, boots-and-all dockland town, resembling parts of pre-reconstructed Glasgow. Seamen's hostels, offal butchers, billiard saloons, ship's chandlers, betting shops, dosshouses and brothels were plentiful. Rough-and-ready pubs stood on every corner; brawls were frequent. Old-time Leithers remember late-night drinkers being brought home from the pub in wheelbarrows. Today, after a long, harsh history of rivalry between Leith and Edinburgh, many Leithers find it hard to accept the port has become virtually an Edinburgh suburb.
In 1544 Henry VIII commanded his navy to "sack Leith and burn and subvert it." An English fleet under the Earl of Hertford did so in two massive raids. Edinburgh was spared. Leith then endured the dual depredations of Oliver Cromwell and the bubonic plague. The Black Death killed two-thirds of its citizens. No wonder survivors took to whisky.
The biggest industry and tourist attraction is modern Leith is the James Pringle Woollen Mill, which includes a Clan Tartan Centre. Here stands a computer which, when fed with a surname of Scottish origin, produces a printed certificate giving details of the clan tartan, clan chief and even the clan war cry. A rival tartan-based enterprise once tried to lure tourists with the following sign: "Don't leave Scotland without looking up our kilts to find where you come from."
Leith's other industry, quiet but growing, is the Scotch Malt whisky Society. The society was founded in the early 1980s by a band of enthusiasts who discovered they preferred the unrefined flavour of whisky taken straight from the cask to that of whisky, which had been diluted and filtered -- as it is when bottled commercially. The Society, which buys single-malt cask whisky directly from distillers and bottles it without further processing, now claims more than 15,000 "active members". Exactly how active after a few drams isn't disclosed, but it's an impressive membership for an institution which has never advertised. It includes over 1000 members living overseas.
As the Society has grown, its Giles Street headquarters, known as The Vaults and identified by a brass plaque, has lured ever more whisky-lovers to Leith. For a quick introduction to the delights of Scotch, The Vaults is ideal. It is much less 'touristy' than the Scotch Whisky Heritage Centre in Edinburgh's Royal Mile (a sort of whisky theme park, where visitors trundle about in barrel-shaped carts) and it is better suited to those with limited time than the famed 112-kilometre Malt whisky Trail in the Grampian Highlands. The latter is a wonderful experience, visiting eight distilleries, but it does require more than a wee bit of time.
Visitors to The Vaults may join the Society for about £50. To make payment less painful, new members receive a free bottle of choice whisky, worth about the same. Members may also stay in one of two reasonably priced flats on the premises, as has singer Annie Lennox.
The Vaults resembles a gentlemen's private club which admits women. It boasts a splendid 19th-century lounge and bar furnished with plush leather chairs, a capacious fireplace, burgundy-coloured walls, chandeliers and -- of course -- an impressive array of whisky bottles. Unlike commercially bottled malt whiskies, cask whiskies are neither chill-filtered nor diluted. They are placed in casks straight from the pot-still in which they are made, and then poured into the bottle. This means they contain more impurities than their filtered counterparts (devotees say this adds to their character) and they vary greatly in smell and taste. Most of the flavour comes from peat, described technically as "semi-carbonised vegetable tissue formed by partial decomposition in water of various plants found in large bogs".
Cask whiskies are much stronger than bottled malts or blended whiskies. They can wipe out an unwary drinker in less than half an hour, which is why whiskies at The Vaults are always taken with a dash of tepid water, turning slightly cloudy in the process. Some whiskies there are more than 65 percent alcohol. For comparison, a bottle of Johnnie Walker Red Label (not permitted in The Vaults because of its blended nature) is a mere 40 percent alcohol. A bottle of Glenfiddich (a single-malt whisky) is only 43 percent alcohol.
Whiskies sold by the Society are identified by number. Visitors look up the number in the bottling register, where they encounter the lyrical prose of the tasters. "It has a light colour and a powerful, excellent nose of seaweed rather than the peat you might expect," one entry reads. "But with water the nose turns to tar like a sailor's pigtail, showing that the malt had indeed been heavily peated. It tastes sweet and medicinal, like a delicious Dettol."
That description applies to a 12-year-old whisky from the bleak, misty isle of Islay, west of Glasgow. Another whisky is described as tasting of "peardrops and licorice; like dipping into a bag of allsorts or sniffing plasticine warmed in the hand". Another has "a sharp, attacking nose, permeated by a smell of feints". Yet another is "sweet but not vulgarly so: not overdressed, like an elegant hooker."
British customs regulations prohibit the posting of whisky abroad (alas), but overseas members can pay £35 for a class of membership which lets them at least receive the Society's official newsletters. They can wear the official tie and enjoy the Society's facilities when they reach Scotland.
On leaving The Vaults, a visitor shouldn't hurry from Leith without sampling a pint or two of 'Archibald Arrols 80-shilling ale' across the road at the Bay Horse, a basic Scottish pub with an authentic local flavour. As we strolled into the bar, a muffled crash was followed by a cry - a drinker had toppled from his bar-stool.
Fortunately the stool was low and willing friends hoisted the seasoned
tippler from the floor, unscathed, to order another pint. The best way
back to Edinburgh from Leith is by taxi. Buses operate the route but a
taxi is frankly less of a headache. Headache? Surely I didn't use that
term – whisky connoisseurs never mention such matters.
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