A Strange Trip to Mull and a Distillery Tour

We didn’t expect this holiday to be normal, but today it became just a little weirder.

At least we didn’t have to get up at five-thirty this morning. We had the morning free. I think that the morning was supposed to be a trip to the Oban Distillery. Due to the current restrictions our tour had to be split into two groups, one group had the morning slot, ours had the afternoon.

We didn’t do that much with our new found freedom. We went to Tesco’s, to top up on our snacks. Tesco’s in Oban may have the widest catchment area of any supermarket in the UK. People apparently come from as far away as Barra to do their shopping. (Probably a monthly shop rather than weekly.)

Having picked up our, hotel supplied, packed lunches we set off for the ferry terminal to catch the MV Isle of Mull, to Mull. Craiginure, to be precise.

I’m not sure what the original itinerary was, but what happened was we caught the ferry across to Mull, disembarked, then re-boarded, and went straight back to Oban. The Sound of Mull is a very scenic cruise, and the weather was excellent, if a little chilly, but it would have been nice to spend a bit of time actually on the Island. I am making the assumption that getting us back for the Distillery was the object of the exercise

We arrived back in Oban in plenty of time for our distillery visit. Again it wasn’t as I had anticipated. I thought we would be given a tour round the actual distillery, followed by a dram in the sample room. What we got was a very entertaining talk on how the whisky is made. Our guide explained how the taste of the whisky is influenced by how the malt is produced, the smokiness, from the peat, the esters that give the whisky its subtly, from the brewing, and to a lesser extent, distilling process. Above all the character of the whisky comes from the cask that it is matured in. Normally the casks are second hand American Bourbon casks, but they also use old sherry casks.

We were given a ‘tasting’ stave of four of the distillery’s products. The standard 14 year old, a Distillers Edition, the Little Bay and a Distillery only bottling. The only problem was that because of current restrictions on selling alcohol in Scotland, we were only allowed to nose (smell) them. Now you can tell a lot about a whisky’s character by its nose. The people who produced blended whiskies, such as Bells or The Famous Grouse, do it almost all by the nose. However it is not quite the same as being able to taste them. They did however give us samples to take away and taste at our leisure. It was unfortunate that the sample bottles looked like the type of thing you would use to take a urine sample to the doctors. We were assured that the product inside did taste much better.

I decided, based on the nose, to buy a bottle of the fourteen year old. When we tried our samples back at the hotel, I decided that I had made a good choice. Actually, the Distillery only bottling was sublime, but it was £100 a bottle.

I may have a comparative tasting session with the Caol Ila. I could also include the Ardbeg that my sister bought me for my birthday and Diane’s current favourite, Laphroaig. The Ginger Wine will not be going anywhere near any of them.

Tonight we didn’t have a dinner booked at the hotel. Rail Discoveries, rightly, assume that most people like a change from the hotel food and want to find a restaurant and eat out for one night of the tour. Scottish Covid-19 restrictions, unfortunatly, mean that all restaurants have to close at six p.m. which is a pity because Oban has a few decent restaurants. Takeaways are still allowed to open, so we found a chip shop. Diane was boring and had cod and chips, which you can get in any chip shop anywhere. I had white pudding supper. I haven’t had one for about forty years.

Also while we were waiting for our chips we saw a most magnificent sunset.

The chips were nearly as good.