Secrets of lost village’s illicit whisky still

IT was sacrilege, I know. But I did it anyway. I’m not proud. I know purists will be turning in their graves. I just couldn’t help myself. So contrary to all the rules of etiquette I publicly confess in these here columns I drank a bottle of Old Pulteney single cask whisky with... yes, Coca-Cola.

Shame on me.

But it did taste magnificent!

And it had all started so well. I was cashing in on a gift voucher to undertake a "whisky lover’s tour" of Pulteney Distillery. The renowned maritime malt has long been a favourite of mine so you can imagine just how delighted I was the tour also entitled me to an exclusive hand bottling session. Truly, it doesn’t get any better!

The distillery website is very inspiring. "The Old Pulteney distillery in Wick," it tells us, "is the most northerly distillery on the Scottish mainland. It is a windswept location, where the uncompromising landscape of the Highlands meets the North Sea, and the waves crash against the granite walls of the harbour.

"The extreme location and unique stills have resulted in a distinctive flavour, bursting with the power and subtlety of the sea. Old Pulteney is the embodiment of history, people and place."

Established in 1826 (at the height of the herring boom) the distillery itself has an absorbing history, with its "unique stills defying convention to this day. The wash still, in particular, is a source of fascination to visitors due to the absence of a ‘swan neck’. Legend has it that when the still was delivered it was too tall for the still house and the manager simply decided to cut the top off!"

The Old Pulteney bottle now incorporates a bulbous neck to reflect the shape of the stills.

The author and broadcaster Tom Morton made a memorable motorcycle tour around Scotland some 20 years ago. His plan, if he had one, was to visit each and every whisky distillery in Scotland.

His trusty steed was an old MZ motorcycle (complete with sidecar). He named it "the Orange beast". That journey, "hectically researched, irreverently penned and a gloriously rude send up of the Scotch whisky industry", inspired the publication of his account of that journey called Spirit of Adventure – A Journey Beyond the Whisky Trails.

HE considered Wick "strangely sited on the coast below its Second World War airfield". Wandering around the town he thought it "a curious amalgam of screamingly self-important buildings like its town hall and bank, and a jumble of seemingly unplanned modern estates, including one of almost Castlemilk proportions".

He says: "I decide to like Wick. It is clinging to a greater past, to the glories of the silver darlings, but it seems to have real character. The people are rude, barely moving a muscle to serve you if you do happen to find a shop open on a Sunday. But there is a spark there, a distinctive pride which is totally absent from Thurso, just up the road."

His account reminded me of that Scottish epic Whisky Galore, by Compton Mackenzie. The islanders of Eriskay, in the Hebrides, couldn’t believe their luck when the 8000-ton cargo vessel SS Politician ran aground on their shores one winter’s night in 1941. On board were 28,000 cases of malt whisky.

Everyone knows what happened next... How the enterprising islanders set about looting the wreck and planking their golden booty in every crook and cranny – far from the prying eyes of the excise man.

It was, of course, our national bard who proclaimed: "Whisky and freedom gang together".

It was, perhaps, a curious paradox given that Burns, himself an excise man, should pen "an earnest prayer" – or satire – on the government of the day’s taxation of whisky!

So it seems we Scots were all "natural anarchists" in our beginnings. Enjoying a dram (or two) and feeling more than a little hostility towards the taxman.

Certainly the good folk of "the hills" beyond Lybster in the district of Badryrie felt that way.

If you make the trek beyond Achavanich, the "field of the monks", you come upon the ruins of the lost village. The last villager left in 1932 and since then the dwellings have fallen into disrepair. At one stage the community even boasted a shoemaker.

One building has a secret cavity wall where the illicit whisky still was hidden. You have to literally climb up on top of the walls of the croft house to be able to look down into the craftily constructed partitioning wall which housed the void for whisky production. A box bed concealed access to the secret cavity.

According to the late eminent local historian, D.B. Miller, of Stirkoke, "despite whisky being almost on tap, drunkenness never seemed to be a problem". He of all people would have known. His grandparents lived at Badryrie and, as a young boy, he used to stay with them there on holiday.

His near neighbour, Willie Thompson, of Tannach, was a legendary local hero who shared Rabbie Burns’s ambivalence about whisky and taxation. The two did not go together in his eyes.

He was our local moonshiner during the long years of prohibition when the town was dry (before the war).

There’s a story about a Customs and Excise raid on his croft which failed to find any evidence of his lethal hooch. They retreated disconsolately as Willie played "Will Ye No Come Back Again" on his bagpipes!

Ah, the good old days...

I see a limited edition 40-year-old Old Pulteney single malt is retailing for a mere £1500 – must be some dram!

I’d be happy to sample a scoosh, purely for review purposes to share with readers of this column – if the offer was ever open...

And I promise there’d be no Coca-Cola this time!