The joy of Glenmorangie

Glenmorangie is the most accessible of malt whiskies. It is a gentle, almost feminine creature, with hints of spring flowers, chardonnay, eine kleine nachtmusik, wholly different from the lowering malts of the Outer Isles. With them, there is no question of hints, let alone Mozart. A blast of peat and iodine arrives to the skirl of the pipes: a mighty dram worthy of the sea-girt rocks among which it was cradled.

Both have their place. I recently helped a friend polish off his last bottle of ’63 Glenmorangie. It had gained in depth, strength and subtlety. Should you possess any, our bottle was showing no scintilla of senescence. Its owner is a Scotsman who has grown rich in the colonies and was resolutely uninterested in his treasure’s value (no doubt eye-watering). He claimed that I had earned my share by reassuring him about the referendum campaign. Neither of us could believe that the nation which had invented whisky and provided the staff officers for the British Empire, while also winning glorious battle-honours during the Enlightenment, was about to take leave of its senses and vote to girn in a kail-yard.

As we drank, I had a madeleine moment. Back in the late Eighties, there was a brief entr’acte when the Green party seemed to be an important political force. They had a conference in Wolverhampton. I went to take a sneer and was not disappointed. There was a balcony of political reporters: every paper had sent a junior pol corr, tasked with straight coverage. Having listened to hours of tedium, they were on the cusp of mutiny. The Greens had one sole female who would have needed help from the make-up department before going on stage as a witch in Macbeth; the rest were beyond parody.