by Denis Campbell

It has to be the toughest of businesses. Imagine going to the bankers today, trying to guess what and how much of your product will be consumed 12-years from now! How do they know what we’ll be drinking? If there is a recession coming? Will people still enjoy sipping single malt? Will prices be high enough then to recover costs? What pressure will middlemen exert?

We’ve spent part of the last two summers in Scotland where a trip to the centuries old ferry port city of Oban is just not complete without a visit to the scotch whiskey distillers of the same name. My good friend Hans Offringa wrote the definitive history of single malt (and dutifully sampled every blend for us, it’s a tough job and somebody has to do it being his excuse) and it makes a wonderful holiday gift for the true aficionado in your or any family (yes it’s a shameless plug for his book The Road to Craigellachie and he would do the same).

Two years ago, in a brilliant bit of marketing, Oban Distillers created a special blend which, after sitting for 12-years in oak casks, was poured into similarly old sherry casks. There it sat for another 9-10 months soaking up the colour and texture of the sherry residue to create a deep, almost auburn coloured sipping single malt. It was very close to a sexual experience pouring that bottle.

And yet a year later when I double-parked the car and ran into the store, the crushing blow was that Oban discontinued that particularly luscious blend for lack of sales. Fortunately there was an enterprising business three doors down that collected every case of the discontinued bottles they could get their hands on and, in a free market capital sort of way, doubled the price.

No matter, two bottles were lovingly stored in crevices of the boot where they now sit ¾ consumed. Just when despair was again about to set in, Glenmorangie distillers came to the rescue with a similarly produced blend so all is right with the world again.

Like most young men, I learned the art of sipping from my father (although he was somewhat uncouth, bruising the whiskey by pouring it over ice – gasp!) and trying to explain my mature and refined love affair with single malt is like trying to explain a 5-day test cricket matches to an American lady friend. This was my attempt…

Be careful lass how you use the term Scotch or I may have to don me kilt and teach ya a thing or two about peat mash as a real Campbell of Argyll.

A bottle of sipping whiskey must be the finest of the lot, can easily cost £50-£100 ($75-$150) or more and should last more than year’s time. This is sipping whiskey, no more than 2 fingers at a time and that can and should take an entire evening, preferably by a roaring fire, to down. Not to be fussy or snobbish (which, of course, means I’m about to be), I only drink minimum 10-year old single malt scotch whiskey, smokily aged in oak casks for 10-15 years then, preferably, my absolute favourite, aged an additional 9-10 months more by a master distiller in old sherry casks to bring out both richer colour and flavour.

I could no more drink the blended ‘monkey piss’-like (alphabet letters separated by an ampersand brand name omitted for fear of a vicious UK slander lawsuit, I mean if grocer bully tesco can sue a writer in the Far East, what’s to stop anyone), etc. poured in the States over ice (gasp!) with Coca Cola (shudder!!) or club soda (what Philistines!!!) than a mid-80s Bartylls and James wine cooler (my lawyer prays that those are still not being made and ordered a pre-publication apology to the great American vineyard Ernest and Julio Gallo, purveyours of fine wines around the world – but I digress). 

We’re talking respect here. Great sipping whiskey drunk neat, direct from the bottle, with a very few droplets of water dribbled across the top of the contents of the open glass to unleash an explosion of taste and flavour.

Now mix THAT with the finest Davidoff Tubos 2000 Dominican or MonteChristo Cuban cigar number 3 (relax HM Customs allows them to be purchased, there is no embargo in this country), stored in my humidor at the perfect 67% humidity and the experience is, well, orgasmic. OK not that good but close…

So the next time I complain about the weather here, please remind me that without these continually moist conditions creating the peat bogs that become Oban, Talisker, Glenmorangie, even our own Welsh made Penderyn (that should make my mate’s Brian Morgan’s day), my love affair with single malt will continue.

I just wonder how they will forecast 2020 sales in this economy…