Raw Spirit (38 page)

And so to Bladnoch, the distillery that sounds like it’s in Wales. Actually it’s the closest distillery to Wales. And England, obviously. Bladnoch lies way, way down on the south-west corner of Scotland, near the town of Wigtown, which is sort of between Dumfries and Stranraer.

This bit of countryside is just packed with great roads; my route has taken us down some effectively deserted bits of tarmac through rotundly spectacular great hills and deep green valleys; wonderful open, rolling scenery incised with immensely fun roads. Near New Galloway, I stop to take a photo of a piece of sculpture sitting on a rise overlooking the road, a giant egg-shaped thing made of small rough slabs of red sandstone. There’s no plaque or notice to say who it’s by, but there’s something of a tradition of this sort of thing in this neck of the woods; further south there’s a whole collection of Henry Moore sculptures sited sitting in poses of calm liquidic ease in middle-of-nowhere fields.

The area I’m in now is the Galloway Forest Park, and the road and the scenery both just get better. This is one of the least known bits of Scotland, and one of the most rewarding. It lacks the grand verticality and sheer scale of the West Highlands, but makes up for that with a more accessible, even friendlier landscape of rumpled hills, fertile valleys (down here they don’t feel like glens), high moors, a fine smattering of castles, small, winding lochs, lush fields of positively Irish greenness, huge forests and neat, idiosyncratic towns with names like St John’s Town of Dalry, Newton Stewart, Castle Douglas and Gatehouse of Fleet. And all this is before you even get to the coast, which feels sometimes like the least Scottish bit of Scotland (with the possible exception of St Andrews on Graduation Day). The Solway coast can feel almost like part of Dorset. Or South Wales. Hence
Bladnoch
having that Welsh connection, you feel (I mean, wrongly, obviously).

Bladnoch distillery disappeared off the extant distillery map some years ago; United Distillers – as they then were – owned it from 1983 to 1993, when they closed it down and removed all the stocks of whisky, the pipe work and other whisky-making bits and pieces (save for the big, expensive-to-break-up things like the mash tun, washbacks and stills) and sold the buildings as very much not a going concern, with the condition included in the deeds to the place that it could not be used as a distillery in the future. And that certainly seemed to be that for Bladnoch.

Then an Irishman called Raymond Armstrong decided he wanted to buy a holiday cottage on the Solway coast. He bought Bladnoch. Now, there is a cottage sort of attached to Bladnoch, but basically this is a whole sprawling complex of light-industrial buildings with what certainly looks like several acres of warehousing space adjoining; how the hell you’d cop for this lot while looking for a wee holiday home by the coast quite defeats me. Whatever; Mr Armstrong signed the papers, then thought, actually, it would be interesting to try his hand at distilling. Either he’s a real sweet talker or United Distillers were much nicer than Ravening Capitalist Mega Corps are supposed to be, because they agreed to alter the terms of the no-distilling clause to let Bladnoch make up to 100,000 litres of spirit a year (it could make over ten times that at full production), and so Mr A, after installing the necessary pipes and ancillary bits and pieces and attending to the legal paperwork, had his working distillery.

Sitting just outside Wigtown in the midst of fields beside the lower tidal reaches of the river Bladnoch, across from a pleasant little pub with colourfully impressive hanging baskets, the distillery is attractive and welcoming. When I arrived they had a pair of six-week old kittens called Sherry and Bourbon wandering around the courtyard and Visitor Centre in that dazed, not entirely coordinated, what-am-I-doing-here-again? manner that kittens tend to exhibit at that age.

Bladnoch is basically a one-person-operated distillery; with its necessarily sedate production schedule, each stage of the process is carried out in discrete steps and only needs one person to oversee everything. Many more people are required to staff the Centre and manage the place than it needs to actually make the whisky. Perhaps because of this there is a distinctly relaxed air about Bladnoch, a sort of gentle feel to the place. Also, the tour’s a very reasonable one pound each, so it’s not as though they’re running it more to rake in dosh from the Visitor Centre while forgetting about the whisky itself. It feels like part of the community, too; the old bottling hall has been turned into a fairly sizable function space – something like a modern interpretation of a medieval banqueting hall – with a stage, bar and lots of space for dancing and general hilarity. Popular with the locals for weddings and birthday parties, apparently, and even on a sunny afternoon, deserted apart from our small tour group, it feels like is does indeed have an atmosphere conducive to serious fun.

Very lightly peated indeed (3 p.p.m.), Bladnoch is a light, flowery, crisp dram, very appropriately Lowland in character. I’ve already got a Rare Malts Edition 23-year-old at 53.6 abv and it’s quite a forceful, dynamic dram for something so intrinsically light in character; a rapier to the cutlasses and broadswords of some of the heavier, more northerly whiskies. It’ll be 2010 before the first of the new-ownership bottlings become available from Bladnoch, and it will be interesting to see to what extent the character of the whisky changes then. It’s an easy place to like and the people seem enthusiastic. You find yourself wishing them all the best for the future, and looking forward to watching the development of the distillery and the whisky.

I stop in Wigtown on the way back. It’s Scotland’s Book Town. They’re hoping to turn it into a northern Hay-on-Wye and while it’s not really there yet in terms of the sheer numbers of book shops, it too is developing hopefully and seems encouragingly busy. Even has a bookshop that specialises in SF and related stuff, which is no bad thing. I struggle to restrict myself to two shops and as many books as I can carry. I head back
via
the coast and the A75. The 701 from Moffat is equally inspiring in the opposite direction.

The fake speed camera at Tweedsmuir is still there.

By now it’s June and I’ve started writing the book. We’ve played host to Ann’s sister Susan and her husband Phil as well as to Ann’s parents, Denis and Christa, so Ann doesn’t feel too left out or lonely as I sit in the study clattering away at the keyboard. We’ve been abroad with Denis and Christa in Cyprus back in March, of course (cue that unexpected snow in Pissouri) and we went to Berlin – one of my favourite cities since I hitchhiked there from Hamburg in 1975 – with Sue and Phil back in November. Cue perfectly expectable temperatures of umpteen below. On the way to Berlin, changing flights at Birmingham Airport, I picked up a copy of
Whisky
magazine. By November I’d already signed up to write this book, and besides, the magazine had an article about whisky bars in Berlin. We don’t actually visit any of these bars, though we do stroll round the Charlottenburg Palace and visit another great palace, in this case of retailism, KaDeWe. KaDeWe is a monumental department store whose two top storeys are devoted to food and drink. These two floors make Harrods Food Hall look like a corner shop. Seriously; if you ever go to Berlin, don’t miss KaDeWe; if you have any interest in food and drink
at all
those two top storeys are just another vision of heaven.

Later I take out a subscription for
Whisky
, strictly in the interests of diligent research.

I’ve settled into a routine of writing, doing all the usual domestic stuff, and – to try and keep even slightly fit while being basically sedentary through most of the day – augmenting my usual short walks round the village with longer walks in the forests and hills within a half-hour’s drive.

There are still distilleries to be investigated, however, and malts to be drunk. The next couple of unwitting guests to be press-ganged into some gratuitous distillery-researching are the Obasis.

Michelle Hodgson used to do my publicity. She’s working for the
Guardian
and
Independent
these days and – as an aspiring
writer
– writing novels in her spare time, but for a good decade or so she was the person who had the task of arranging my promotional tours round the country and then accompanying me round the bookshops for a fortnight at a time. Michelle did this for lots of other writers too, of course, but my book-a-year schedule meant that she probably had to endure more time with me over those ten years than any other scribbler. Despite this, she became good friends with Ann and me – to the extent that our spare room was renamed the Hodgson Suite – and we’ve kept in touch since she left Little, Brown.

Michelle is another of these approximately-eleven-years-younger pals, about the same age as Gary and Roger. The girl takes her novel research seriously. She lived on Guadeloupe in the Caribbean for almost half a year to research a novel set there, and moved out for three months to Benin, next door to Nigeria, a couple of years ago, to work on another book. In both places the national language is French, which Michelle is fluent in, and part of the idea was to go somewhere hot and exotic, certainly (research should be fun, as I’ve always thought and am trying to prove), but more importantly somewhere hot and exotic off the more usually trodden tracks for English speakers. Ann and I duly went out to Guadeloupe for a week when she was there – just to make sure she was okay, obviously – but missed out on Benin.

Maybe just as well. While Michelle was there she contracted malaria. She got through it, and it was one of the not-quite-so-serious, non-recurring types, but it sounded unpleasant enough from the symptoms she described. One of the main reasons she got through the illness was a young Nigerian man called Tom Obasi, who looked after her while the disease was at its worse. They were married a few months later.

Why Roger and I have mixed feelings about Brad
.

Bradley Adams is a great tall chunky man of quietly riotous good humour and a passion for films and for making films that can even get through my near-invincible filmic disillusion. He
was
the producer of
The Crow Road
, and, if the money is ever got together, will produce the films of my books that Roger has been working on the scripts of. He has an enormous reservoir of Really Funny Film Stories (many of them libellous), is great company and, in a modest, unassuming way, is profoundly impressive.

Roger, Brad and I were sitting in the secret underground HQ of Brad’s production company in Soho (well, I usually get lost when I’m trying to find it and it is in the basement). We were in what I think is supposed to be the script development room but which always feels to me like the staff room or the common room or the officers’ mess or something, sitting round the table drinking wine and chatting. Roger and I were about to leave to meet Michelle for the first time since she’d got back from Africa, before rendezvousing with Brad again later so I could do research for my novel
Dead Air
(this consisted of going to a huge early Christmas party being thrown by Working Title Films at the RAC Club on Piccadilly, then going on to the Groucho Club and the Soho House and then the Century Club where I had a great time but then completely forgot all about until we had the book’s launch party there, coincidentally, most of a year later. After that we went back to Claridge’s and sat talking nonsense, mostly, all night).

So, just before Roger and I were about to leave the secret bunker to go and meet Michelle, I mentioned to Brad that Michelle had gone to Africa and got the two big ‘M’s: Malaria and Married. This was an observation of such minor wit even I wasn’t remotely proud of it, but people kind of expect this sort of thing when you’re a writer and it’s hard to get out of character sometimes. Brad just nodded once and said, ‘Ah yes; first bitten, then smitten.’

Roger and I looked at each other, faces falling.

We were supposed to be the writers; we do the quips, the funny dialogue, the one-liners. Not producers. And we rarely expect to generate all the above stuff in real time; it can often take hours of work (or what certainly
feels
like hours of work) to create what looks and sounds like a single snappy off-the-cuff remark.

Naturally we pointed out this basic film industry professional demarcation issue to Brad at the time, but I doubt the scamp took any notice.

In any event, maybe now you can see why we both love the guy and – when he says something like that – really
really
hate him.

So, Michelle and Tom come to stay in what is now the Obasi Suite. We go to the Omar Khayyam, come home and play lots of pool. This mostly means Tom and me being competitive and me being lucky. Tom is a breezily cheerful guy with a neat turn of phrase. He looks fit as an ebony fiddle (well, maybe a viola) but declares that he has to be careful not to eat too much because as he tells us, ‘I am vulnerable to expansion’. Nobody who sees Michelle and Tom together could doubt they married for love, but he’s had predictable problems getting a residency visa for the UK. It’s been sorted out now and he’s set up his own company to install security camera systems, though what he wants to do is start up an import-export business shipping goods to and from Nigeria.

The next day we load up the M5 and head for Mull, to visit the Tobermory distillery. Music comprises three CDs of soul classics,
Buzzin
’, the second Bumblebees album,
Specialist in all Styles
by Orchestra Baobab and
Loss
, by Mull Historical Society.

We take the Glen Devon route to Crieff, then head on down the A85 for Oban. The stretch between Tyndrum and Dalmally is the best bit, with intestinally sinuous curves and fabulously long, open straights, then after Lochawe village there are more fast lengths along the side of Loch Awe through the Pass of Brander.

There’s a power station built into the mountain of Ben Cruachan and one day I really intend to visit it. The power station uses off-peak electricity generated by other power stations during the night to pump water out of Loch Awe up to the Cruachan reservoir 1500 feet up the mountain. It takes so long to shut down your average power station efficiently that it’s cheaper to keep them running overnight and use the power for schemes like this. During the day, when there are
peaks
in demand, the water’s released from the reservoir and flows back down to Loch Awe through some humungous pipes and a huge turbine hall hollowed out of the middle of the mountain. The turbines drive generators and the electricity they make goes into the National Grid.