Put it this way; those mentioned above range from merely very good indeed to utterly stunning, with a power and opulence of taste bursting through the older whiskies that beggars belief. There’s intense smoke – though like summer bonfires, not just peat fires – whin scent on a sea breeze, plus the entire contents of a well-stocked florist. Just the most glorious, life-affirming stuff. I can accept that people might not like Laphroaig and maybe the other south coasters, but if you can’t find a Bowmore to fall in love with, you may have to consider very seriously the possibility that you’re wasting your money drinking whisky at all.
Distillery aesthetics: a highly partial overview.
Many distilleries are quite beautiful. A lot, probably the majority, are set in scenery which is somewhere between rather lovely and utterly magnificent. There is, obviously, no real link between the nobility of the distillery’s environs or its architectural attractiveness and the worth of the whisky made there. There are a few quite gorgeous distilleries, jewels in fabulous settings or just extremely interesting architecturally, which produce whisky of no great singular merit (though they often contribute significantly to fine blends). On the other hand there is, for example, Glenlivet, which – while it rests within some perfectly pretty Speyside hill-and-glen scenery – from any direction I’ve ever come at it from, looks like a bit of a mess, sprawling across its hillside in a bedraggled mixture of building styles, proportions and textures which end up being anything but easy on the eye.
And it doesn’t matter, because Glenlivet is rightly regarded as one of the great Speysides, indeed one of the great single malt whiskies. It would be nice if it was produced in something obviously befitting its intrinsic stature, something of either perfectly natural, almost organic vernacular elegance, or of painstakingly careful design by Lutyens or Sir Richard Rogers, but that would just be a bonus, and it’s better that the attention of all concerned is on the whisky itself, not the buildings, rather than the other way round.
The Islay distilleries are all pretty spoiled when it comes to setting. The two least favoured are Bruichladdich and Bowmore, the former because it’s just a pleasant assemblage of buildings by a nice wee village on a stretch of shore which is by turns sandy and rocky, with a broad, shallow sea loch in front and low, tree-lined hills behind (see, it’s actually in a pretty damn spiffing situation, but we’re talking relative values here); the latter because it’s in a roughly similar context on the opposite side of Loch Indaal and is part of the town of Bowmore. In fact, the distillery’s so integrated into the rest of the town that, when its stills are producing, the excess hot water helps to heat the municipal swimming pool next door. Again, Bowmore, Islay’s effective capital, is a fine, attractive little town and no disgrace at all to the smart, tidy distillery on its southern perimeter, it’s just that the other Islay distilleries are so much more dramatic in their surroundings.
The three south coasters look out to the long arm of sea that is the … well, to be honest I’m not sure. Even after scrutinising my dad’s old Admiralty charts I can’t decide whether it’s a sort of out-pouching of the Irish Sea, part of the Atlantic or the start of the Sound of Jura. Anyway, it’s deepish water, and can be wild in a winter storm. Small islands – more like jagged scatters of rock – pierce the waters offshore and the distilleries look sort of nestled into the broken folds of the sea-facing land, as if they’ve squatted there amongst the boulders, lochans and trees and then sort of wriggled about to get themselves hunkered down and comfortable.
They look elegant. They have whitewashed walls, black roofs and black detailing, pagodas standing proud, clipped lawns and a general air of discreet pride. Handily, all of them have their names in VERY LARGE LETTERS painted in black on their tallest seaward walls, so if you take a photo from the right angle you never need to scratch your head and mutter, Well, I think it looks like Laphroaig, but maybe it’s Ardbeg …
Caol Ila and Bunnahabhain sit in even more dramatic scenery, wedged at the bottom of steep hillsides as though teetering on the brink of falling into the sea, looking respectively across and up the Sound of Jura, with the Paps of Jura rising in an appropriately, if colossally, mammiform manner across the water. There used to be a quite spectacularly complete but rusty wreck lying at a steep angle up on the rocks just along the coast from Bunnahabhain – I remember seeing it from the ferry as we approached from Colonsay, a dozen years or so ago – but the same stormy seas that drove the ship there in the first place have pounded it to pieces since and there’s little left to see now.
Given its remote and wild situation it seems almost odd that Bunnahabhain produces what is in some ways the lightest, least dramatic Islay whisky; it’s still quite oily and salty while being moderately sherry-sweet and has a hint of peat, but it’s a mellow drink compared to the others, and also compared to its dramatic, thrown-down setting. I feel I’m kind of damning it with faint praise here, but it’s actually a very fine malt, and if all the Islays were as ferociously heavy hitting as Laphroaig, brandishing their peat, smoke and iodine in your face, the island would lose a great deal; Bunnahabhain is more the strong, silent type, and none the worse for that. Quite a lot of it goes into Black Bottle, making it perhaps the best reasonably-priced blend on the market, certainly for Islay lovers.
On Islay I’m staying at Ballivicar farm, near Port Ellen, with Toby and Harriet Roxburgh. Toby is a rotund, ruddy figure, avowedly Scottish yet with an accent he himself describes as ‘cut-glass’. Toby has the best basilisk stare I’ve ever encountered (though never, happily, in anger) and once told the late Robert Maxwell to ‘Fuck off!’, and lived – and remained employed – to tell the tale. I think hopper loads of respect are due on that count alone.
Educated and erudite, witty and well read, Toby is a man I first got to know as the person who bought The Wasp Factory for paperback, when he was editor of Futura. Later he took on Consider Phlebas, my first science fiction novel, and we really got to know each other at the first SF convention I ever attended, in 1986. I say got to know; what I mean is I lay on the floor in the bar under a table with a pint of beer balanced on my chest, wondering vaguely why the ceiling seemed so close, while Toby generously plied my wife with champagne.
It was at the same convention, Mexicon II, that I first encountered John Jarrold. A famous fan – I have no intention of attempting to explain the intricacies or even the basics of British SF Fandom In The Late Twentieth Century, Its Customs And Mores; you’ll just have to accept concepts like that of a famous fan – John later became a respected editor, and not just of science fiction.
John and I haven’t met up for some time and neither of us has seen Toby and Harriet for years, so a rendezvous on Islay has been arranged, John flying in earlier on the Friday afternoon from Hastings via Heathrow and Glasgow. We’ll meet up with photographer Martin Gray tomorrow. Martin has taken on the unenviable job of trying to take a decent photograph of me for the book’s cover. My editor for this book, Oliver Johnson, will appear on Monday, arriving on the plane that will take John back down south.
John sits in the Roxburghs’ kitchen, having just finished some of the lamb I at first refuse and will later tuck into. He is resplendent in an impressively thick white cable-knit jumper and what certainly appears to be an equally impressively thick white cable-knit beard and moustache. John has a seemingly photographic memory for Shakespeare, the words of every musical ever committed to celluloid and the dialogue from most films of the past 50 years. This, coupled with a profoundly ingrained desire to share this knowledge with you, does, of course, make him a deeply annoying person to watch a film with if you haven’t already seen it and he has, but it’s a small price to pay.
Well, that and the fact that when he starts quoting Shakespeare and you think, Ha, I know this bit! and join in, you inevitably find that the segment you know only extends to cover the next couple of lines, whereas the verses John’s regaling you with seemingly stretch on, through and indeed occasionally beyond the next Act. Never mi
nd, the guy’s a joy to be with and he did arguably save my life once, on a hotel balcony in Brighton very early one morning back in the late eighties, so I shouldn’t criticise just because he knows stuff I don’t (we’ll come to the dangerous details of the balcony scene and Toby’s ‘Just a Few Drinks for Friends’ Party later).
Harriet, Toby’s wife, is equally wonderful and even more ruddy-cheeked than her husband, with a great, pealingly infectious laugh and a neat ability to control a fully loaded quad bike while remaining undistracted by a small platoon of accompanying dogs and children. She drives a mean chariot too (they have a chariot made from plywood, an old car axle and what looks like bent scaffolding poles which gets lashed onto the Clydesdale and pulled round the fields with Harriet and a bunch of bouncing, whooping, yelling children aboard. No idea why). Harriet is usually to be found tramping across the farmyard with a bucket of something noisome or just plain smelly swinging from each arm.
The Roxburghs and their farm present an image which, for all its eccentricities, encapsulates fairly representatively what British farming at a certain scale – i.e. not gigantic – has become. Heads are kept above water by extreme, almost tortuous diversification, so that as well as the animal husbandry side (involving both sheep and cattle, and both enterprises perpetually and grotesquely complicated by a brain-boggling array of EU and DEFRA rules and regulations for which the adjective ’Byzantine’ seems woefully inadequate, hinting as it does, relatively speaking, at a regulatory scheme of sweet reason and minimalist elegance compared to the carbuncular reality), money is made from the holiday flats converted from stables attached to the main farm building, from a pony-trekking business and livery sideline, from a waste-paper-shredding scheme and from Toby’s one-week-a-month job as editor of the Ileach, Islay’s very own newspaper. NB: regardless of how Islay itself is pronounced, Ileach, which means somebody from Islay, is pronounced ‘Eelich’. Sorry about this continual pronuncial complexity, but as my computer occasionally informs me in its Stephen Hawking voice, It’s not my fault.
When we arrive at the farm, Belinda, Toby and Harriet’s daughter, has not long returned from maternity hospital in Glasgow. Living on an island like Islay for any substantial amount of time will, unless you keep in very rude health indeed, eventually convince you that helicopter air ambulances are very noisy and not that glamorous after all. Belinda has returned with her tiny, beautiful brand new baby daughter called Beth, sister to Rachael. Rachael is four and very strong willed. She is an uninhibited singer at bath time and hums when she draws. A lovely, single-minded, head-down-determined, even grumpy child, it’s too early to tell whether she’s inherited the female Roxburgh laugh from her mother and grandmother. I like her a lot. Belinda is married to Robert, who is chef at the nearby Machrie Hotel and does wonderful things with local scallops, venison and beef.
We’re driving out to the Machrie for lunch when we see a buzzard. ‘Oh wow,’ I say. ‘A buzzard! Look.’ Ann and I are big fans of buzzards; we’re members of the RSPB but not very dedicated ornithologists, and a buzzard is one of the few large birds we’re able to identify confidently. They’re becoming much more common than they once were but it’s still literally remarkable for us to see one near where we live. The specimen we spot on the way to the Machrie is a big, slow-flapping adult, making its way empty-taloned across the fields to a nearby telephone pole, to perch and scan.
‘Ha!’ Toby says bitterly, glaring at the thing. ‘Buzzards. They’re the reason we don’t have any songbirds at Ballivicar.’
‘Oh,’ I say, crest rapidly falling. What a townie you’re showing yourself to be, Banks, I think.
‘And as for the otters—’
‘You have otters?’ I say, delighted again. ‘I love—’
Toby growls. ‘Damn things keep eating the ducks.’
‘Ah.’
Islay is a fertile, fecund place which is surrounded by – almost infested with – wildlife. There are orcas, dolphins and seals off the coasts, feeding on unseen numbers of fish and crustacea. There are three species of deer scattered through the forests and hills, each of them apparently pursuing lives largely dedicated to jumping out in front of cars at night with the absolute minimum of warning, in – one has to assume – some misplaced spirit of sportingness. There are multitudinous birds of prey, including those songbird-snaffling buzzards, clouds and carpets of wintering geese – just passing through to refuel from and leave fertiliser on the fields (again, at least three different species) – pheasants (plump, brightly coloured birds prone to wandering around fields, hedgerows, verges and any intriguingly tarmacked surface with a distracted air, looking vaguely lost, as though they have the sneaking suspicion they should be somewhere else … basically road kill waiting to happen), otters (boo! hiss! Bad otters!), hares – lots of hares, usually seen bounding away on back legs that somehow look too long for them, as though they’ve borrowed them from a young gazelle – rabbits, plus a whole slew of smaller creatures that are generally only seen in squashed form, decorating the lumpy, undulating, peat-floated road surfaces of Islay with brown-red splodges of fur, meat and bone. These are, especially when fresh – and indeed preferably twitching – of enormous and consuming interest to the noisy flocks of crows which would otherwise be happily employed looking for sheep recently fallen on their backs so they can peck out their eyes or get stuck into their juicily vulnerable nether regions.
There’s so much wildlife on Islay it even interferes with the whisky-making. Worst culprits are the geese, who’ve been known to devour entire fields of barley destined for the honour of becoming whisky, but this hasn’t stopped fish and mammals from trying to get in on the act as well; the day we went to Bunnahabhain they were taking apart one of the cooling columns in the still room because a trout had got into the system from the sea, wedged in the heat exchanger and stopped the whole operation in its tracks. It was even – and evenly – cooked, due to the proximity of the place it got stuck to the hot bits of the pipe work, though whether anybody actually ate it afterwards is not recorded. They were discussing putting a better baffle plate or something on the inlet pipe when we left and talking about how that otter managed to get itself wedged in the same place last year.
It may not exactly be the Serengeti, but living on any farm, especially one in a place with as many wild animals around as Islay, seems to constitute a rapid lesson in the brusque realities of animal life and death; if you didn’t accept the red-in-tooth-and-claw stuff before you get involved with country life, you very soon will. I suppose it’s one reason why farming seems to be a largely hereditary occupation, and why many people who think it’ll be nice to work with animals on a more permanent basis end up having a very short career in the business.
I’ve never met a farmer yet who didn’t have a whole herd of grisly animal horror stories (often as not involving choice phrases like ’prolapsed uterus’ or ‘maggot-infested wounds’). They are only too willing to share these tales with you in gaspingly forensic detail, presumably to remind you of the non-monetary cost of the food in your belly (food which, given the sheer gawd-awfulness of some of the stories, they are often in considerable danger of shortly being able to inspect for themselves). Even the purely arable farmers without a true beast to their name seem to have a stock of tales fit to turn the stomach of a starving vulture.
Life at Ballivicar strikes me as a complicated, often physically and emotionally strenuous but ever-involving and frequently rewarding existence of sustained bucolic chaos, surrounded by chemicals and feed stuffs, hay and manure, machinery, vehicles and tack, by chickens, cats, dogs, sheep, cows, ponies, horses, that ever-present cornucopia of local wildlife and a glorious, bewildering squall of absurdly apple-cheeked children running roaring around in dusty paddocks; barefoot, yelling, caked in muck and generally having what certainly looks like a totally brilliant time. You find yourself having an engrossing conversation with a bright, happily snot-nosed four-year-old who’s come up to ask your name and show you a lengt
h of plastic pipe they’ve decided is a trumpet; you look around in the sunlight at the primary surroundings; bright green grass, rich red earth and pure blue sky and you think, Grief, who’d raise a child in a city?
Then you think, Well, billions do, because they have to, because that’s the way the modern world’s been moving for centuries and there doesn’t look like much around to reverse that course. And suddenly you worry about the child you’re talking to, imagining this sunny openness, this cheery, inquisitive innocence being transplanted to the big bad city where instead of being one of the most happily beautiful things you’ve seen, it becomes a liability, a point of weakness, to be exploited by those unscrupulous enough to treat trust as gullibility and people as collateral, to be damaged.
Finally, though, with a little more thought, you accept that what you see before you still represents such a great start in life, that just as a childhood spent in the muck and glaur, eating dirt and falling into the nettles turns out to be a much more effective way of inoculating a child against infections and allergies to come than keeping them antiseptically spotless and clean, so this farmyard, outdoorsy life of crowded rough and tumble must have its own full suite of lessons about trust and betrayal, allegiances and self-reliance that will translate to any future situation; children are more resilient than we fear and wiser than we think, and we probably worry more than we need.
* * *
Childhood: a sentimental detour.
It seems to me that almost nothing in life is so important as being loved and cared for as a child. Maybe only an early death ever means more, has more bearing on the ultimate shape of an existence. Even a vast lottery win or some other great stroke of fortune means little in comparison, because the legacy of one is liable to affect so profoundly the reaction to the other.