Whisky

Thursday

Peter Mckay

Peter McKay’s diary: Is Kate and William’s Scottish trip a pro-union initiative?

Having dampened local republican ardour during their recent tour of New Zealand and Australia, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge visit thinking-about-breaking-away Scotland next week. They’ll tour Glenturret Distillery near Crieff, Perthshire, next Thursday, to ‘bottle their own Glenturret whisky’, if you please. Sounds like a pro-union royal initiative, but what will First Minister Alex Salmond have to say? He claims he’d like the Queen to continue as Scotland’s head of state, although some of his supporters disagree. When HM said in her letter to the Church of Scotland’s General Assembly last week that she prays everyone ‘will work together for the social good of Scotland’, whatever the outcome of

Wednesday

Andrew Marr

Andrew Marr’s diary: Ruins on Crete and a spat with Alex Salmond

A week away in Crete: I’ve come for the archaeology and culture — little patches of Minos, ancient Greece, Byzantium and the Venetian Republic are scattered around this most southern sentinel of Europe. It hasn’t gone quite as I’d hoped; when it comes to monuments, the Greek rule seems to be ‘close early, close often’. But I’ve much enjoyed the food, a just-swimmable sea, and the benign, gracious hospitality of the locals. At first sight, like much of the eastern Mediterranean, Crete appears to be a matriarchy. Stern women in black still dominate village squares; they travel on tiny, exhausted donkeys as they always have done, whacking them with walking sticks;

Hugo Rifkind Hugo Rifkind

If Ed Miliband can’t be our first Jewish prime minister, he can still be our first atheist Jewish prime minister from Primrose Hill

Last weekend, in a small New Jersey suburb, I found myself in a liquor store. Never been anywhere like it. The walls were lined with single malts of rare and impressive varieties, and the clientele both knew their whisky and spoke of little else. Yet they were all, also, to a man (and they were all men) ultra-orthodox Jews. Properly ultra, as well. There’s a website you might have come across called ‘Amish or Hipster’ and it shows pictures of young folks in beards and hats and braces, and asks you to vote on which particular cult you reckon you are looking at. This lot were like that. The beards

Thursday

Bruce Anderson

Our daily haggis

Give us this day our daily bread: those are also words of great culinary significance. Even if the ‘bread’ takes different forms — rice, pasta, potatoes — billions of people all over the world are following in that prayer’s footsteps. ‘Staple diet’: throughout history, most people have lived off staples, or died when they ran out. Staples stimulated cookery. Over time, though it would be fun to try, even daily caviar might pall: daily bread, somewhat sooner. So those who prepared the basics tried to spice them up. If meat or fish were available, there would be no problem, but they are expensive ingredients. Most of those at subsistence level had

Thursday

Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes: George Osborne’s personal recovery

Now that the economic statistics are looking better, people are beginning to rediscover the once-fashionable thought that George Osborne is a great strategist. Things are coming together before the 2015 election in a way which makes life uncomfortable for Labour. I am not sure that ‘strategist’ is the right word, but I do think Mr Osborne deserves praise for something else. If you compare this government with the last, you will see that it is not dysfunctional in its internal relations. The coalition has constant frictions, but these are, as it were, built into the system. After nearly four years, there is no serious split or even known personal hatred

Thursday

Bruce Anderson

Taste Ranald Macdonald’s wines, and you can forgive his ancestors for allying with the Vikings

The Macdonalds of Clanranald are one of the oldest families in the world. Their lineage comfortably predates the Scotland of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Descended from the Macdonald Lords of the Isles and sea kings of Dalriada, the Clanranalds emerge from the mists, myths and archaeology of the Dark Ages. But they were guilty of a misjudgment. Just as Robert the Bruce started life as an Anglo-Norman noble, the Macdonalds had to navigate the violent uncertainties of pre- and early medieval Scotland. They also had to reckon with the Vikings. (A Viking longship arrives at a beach, and the bosun divides the crew into three squads. ‘You lot, burning and slaughtering. You,

Saturday

The Spectator

Advertisement Feature: Beauty and the Beast

Advertisement Feature UNNECESSARILY WELL MADE The objective at Glenmorangie is whisky perfection; there are no quick fixes and, at each stage, only the best will do. The distillery has been pursuing this same goal since 1843 and makes Scotland’s favourite single malt. Glenmorangie is known for having the tallest stills in Scotland, standing at an impressive 5.14 metres (16ft 101/4 inches). In a Darwinian idiom, the more the alcohol vapours have to defy gravity as they climb to the top of the stills, the greater the likelihood that the fatter, heavier ones won’t survive. Thus, the tall stills result in only the very lightest and purest spirit making it over