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They call it an Islay Mist. To those not from this small island in the
Inner Hebrides, off Scotland's west coast, that means a dense fog.
Dense enough to keep my plane from landing there on a warm summer's
day which at the Glasgow Airport, 115 kilometers away, was sunny and hot.
But Islay is a world unto itself. That's the way the Ileach want
to keep it.
It's gorgeous: sheep chomping on acres of dark green grass running
down to the sea, cattle lolling on the beech, craggy (often misty) hills
behind them. As many as 50,000 geese, and some 3,400 regular inhabitants,
find their quiet broken in the summer by tourists from all over the world
who come to play a little golf, sip a little whisky, maybe ride bikes
or ponies up and down the quiet roads. Residents don't generally
lock their doors. Stuck together on a rock in the Atlantic -- they like
to say the next stop west is New York -- they are used to helping each
other, on fishing vessels or smuggling or sharing a wee dram. When I misjudged
the size of a ditch trying to let another car go by and ended up in it,
the first person I hailed happily provided a rope and a pull.
Whisky is now the biggest business, the magnet for tourists and source
of exports, and the environment couldn't be better suited. In addition
to the sulphur-free peat needed to dry barley and imbue it with the flavor
that makes Islay malts famous, there's lots of clean water, and barley
too. The moist air even helps. It keeps the casks at a relatively stable
temperature as they sit for years or decades giving subtle flavors to
their contents. And it saves the distilleries money. Most distilleries
on the mainland find that casks will lose 3-4% of their contents to evaporation
over time. The distillers call that the "angel's share."
On Islay, the mists keep the angels to 2%.
--
Jef McAllister | Time Europe
mail@timeatlantic.com
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