Day 1 - 30th June, 2015
We left London around 10:30 AM and the drive to Edinburgh was quite uneventful barring a few pit stops and the temperature hitting 31 degrees around 2pm.
Our hotel was on the outskirts of the city so it made travelling a little easier (especially the next morning as we didn't have to face the morning office rush!).
So...without any further delays...let's get to the actual part of our journey! The Scottish Highlands :)
Day 2 - 1st July 2015
The M9/A9 route goes thru the Forth Road Bridge - while crossing the bridge from the Edinburgh side, one has the old Forth Bridge on the right and the new Queensferry Crossing on the left.
The old Forth Bridge opened in 1890 and is a Scottish icon that is recognized the world over as the most famous of cantilever designs. As their website states, it "represents a key milestone in the history of modern railway civil engineering and still holds the record as the world’s longest cantilever bridge". The Forth Bridge has also been inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage site.
The Forth Road Bridge is a suspension bridge and is currently the only way to cross the Firth of Forth by road. It was opened in 1954 and at that time was designed to have a life of 120 years but since the early 21st century the planned theoretical capacity of the bridge has been exceeding year on year which led to the loss in strength of the suspension cable. It was designed to carry up to 11 million vehicles per year, but it was noted that 23 million vehicles had crossed the bridge in 2006 and the count was only increasing by the year.
The distillery lies right off the A9 and is painted bright white which looks amazing against the bright green of the landscape. We were not planning on touring the distillery but that did not stop us from taking the Tasting tour.
Dalwhinnie was special - apart from being set in the middle of nowhere - here, they pair whisky with chocolate! Their website states, "Whisky and Chocolate, a match made in heaven". And, it truly was the 'something different' that they had promised. We did the 3 whisky tasting tour where they paired 3 of their classic single malts with specifically selected luxury highland chocolates.
The B857 road that we took was only one lane with oncoming traffic at ridiculous speeds, but the drive was gorgeous.
Day 3 - 2nd July 2015
The gondola system spans 2.3 kms of the hillside from the base station at 300ft to the top station at 2150ft. To say that I'm scared of heights is an understatement and I have to say I had shivers running down my spine just thinking of getting into this box and travelling up over 2000ft on a rope!
To be honest...it wasn't all that bad. The view was wonderful and thankfully it was not too windy and the gondolas were not swaying as I imagined they would. `
We got to learn a lot about the whisky making process at the distillery. Best was the fact that all you need to create whisky are 3 ingredients: Barley, Water and Yeast.
There are 5 stages to the process: Malting, Mashing, Fermentation, Distillation and Maturation.
Malting is when the barley is germinated so that it releases the starch which is then converted to sugar to make alcohol. The barley is soaked in warm water for 2-3 days and then spread across (on the floor or chambers) and turned regularly to maintain a constant temperature. When the barley starts to get shoots, the germination is stopped by drying it in a oven/kiln. This is where peat is used that gives whisky the smokey flavour. Once dried, the barley(malt) as its called is ground and is ready for the next stage. This ground malt is called grist.
In the Mashing process, the grist is added to warm water in a vessel and turned for several hours in order to extract the sugar from it. The water used in this process gives whisky the name 'watter o' life'. The liquid combination of malt and water is called Mash. During the turning process, the sugar from the malt dissolves in the water and is extracted and is called Wort. Distilleries go thru this extraction process 3 times but the wort from only the first two times is taken forward to the next stage.
The wort is then passed into washbacks which traditionally are made of wood. Here the third important ingredient, yeast, is added for the fermentation to begin. The process is normally run for 48 hours where the yeast turns the sugar to alcohol. liquid at this stage is called Wash. If not for the next process, this liquid can be used to make beer.
The wash is then distilled to make whisky. In Scotland the wash is traditionally distilled twice in copper stills (photo below). The still are of different shapes - though in principal they do the same thing the shape affects the taste of the alcohol. A taller still with a longer neck gives fine and lighter spirit compared to a shorter still which gives fuller and richer spirit. The wash is heated in the still and the vapour that travels up condenses at the neck and is collected as alcohol. The time of distillation is split into thirds. The alcohol at the beginning of the distillation (called foreshot) is very high in content. It is the middle or 'heart' of the distillation process that is collected and used. At the very last stage of the process, the alcohol collected is called 'feint' and in this the content level is very low. The foreshot and feint is mixed with the next batch and re-distilled. The 'heart' normally has an alcohol content of 65-70%
The collected 'hearts' are then put into oak casks for the last stage - Maturation. The American bourbon casks are normally used. In America, new casks are used to mature bourbon as they can only be used once. The old casks are then used for the whisky maturation process. The spirit has to be matured for a minimum of three years before it can be called whisky. As the wood casks are porous, the remnants of an earlier distillation process (bourbon/Sherry) along with the surrounding gives the whisky its unique flavour.
Also, during each year, the spirit loses 2% of its alcohol which is called the 'Angel's Share'. This is why older whisky's are not available readily and more expensive - with each year, there is less and less alcohol in the cask.
Phew...that's enough info for someone to consider distilling their own whiskey :-P
After checking into the hotel, we made our way thru one of the short trails to the Gray Mares waterfall. A wrong turn lead us to the particularly steep and rocky terrain and no where close to the waterfall. It was a beautiful, albeit strenuous hike. One must make note of the Scottish midges - these horrible insects fed on me like I was made out of sugar!
Day 4 - 3rd July 2015
We took the one hour tour of the distillery and our guide was extremely knowledgeable and passionate about the whisky! We had learned the basics of distilling in the tour of Ben Nevis distillery the previous day, so this was more of a refresher tour!
The cool thing about the Oban tour was that the distillery is one of the few in Scotland that operates 365 days a year, and when we did the tour it was fully operational; but, that also meant that there were all kinds of aroma around! We saw all but the last stage of the Oban distillation process - Malting, Mashing, Fermentation and Distillation. The only stage that we did not get to see was the Maturation - where the casks are stored for the said period.
We soon hit Loch Lomond and drove right next to it for most part. We were trying to see if there was a way to fit in another Distillery before hitting lake district, but unfortunately the one near Loch Lomond didn't happen to have any tourist centre. So, down we went till we hit the motorway that took us straight down Glasgow and then back into England and into the infamous Lake District.
Considering we were spending only the one night here, we decided to take the route that cuts thru Lake District all the way down to Lake Windermere. This route is slightly longer and definitely takes more time, but it's extremely scenic and totally worth getting car sick (cos of all the twists and turns and ups and downs)!
Day 5 - 4th July 2015
All in all, we had a very exciting five days where all of us got to learn a lot of new things. There are a lot of things that are yet to be seen in Scotland, so many many more things to do - a few more trips are definitely required!