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The Reverend David Knight doesn’t make a habit of entering competitions. In fact it was one of his daughters who persuaded him to try his luck in last summer’s “Mouth of the Lour” competition, with its winner-takes-all prize of a trip to the Aberlour distillery to make the cask selection for the next batch of a’bunadh. For a man with a taste for the sturdiest of the Aberlour single malts, it was like an answer to a prayer.
David is a minister of the Congregational Church in St Peter Port, Guernsey, second largest of the Channel Islands. A native of the island and a former civil servant, he was ordained in 2001 and preaches at the United Reform Church there.
His ordination into the spirituous world of malt whisky came a little earlier, though as it happens, through a religious connection. It was his tutor, appropriately a Church of Scotland minister, who introduced David to the earthly delights of the “water of life”. Some time later he came across Aberlour 10 Year Old at an airport shop and that prompted a visit to the website, where he signed up as a Companion of Aberlour.
David and his wife Nicola, who shares his liking for a’bunadh (“It’s like Christmas cake in a bottle to her,” he says), flew to Inverness in February on their prize-winning assignment. David has spent quite a lot of time in Scotland but this was his first visit to Speyside. At the convivial and comfortable Mash Tun pub, around the corner from the distillery, they were accommodated in the Aberlour Suite – “I will be recommending it to friends,” says David.
Next morning it was down to business. In the company of Aberlour’s chief blender David Boyd and his colleague Sandy Hyslop, David and Nicola gathered in the Fleming Rooms at the distillery. David and Sandy had made a preliminary selection of 75 samples from casks, which now had to be reduced to a final 50. The whisky was nosed in seven separate batches, representing different ages. A specific number of samples then had to be selected from each batch.
David and Nicola made their selection over a period of three hours, with the two experienced blenders overseeing and endorsing their choice. A “pilot” blend was put together in a bottle and tested against the previous batch. Once this had been approved a second bottle of the new a’bunadh was given to David as a memento. He thinks it is too precious to open. “I’ll just hang on to it,” he says, “and buy some of the new batch to drink and to show off to friends.”
A lively tour of the distillery in the company of Dennis Hendry was followed by some sightseeing, which included a visit to the beautiful Linn Falls and to one of James Fleming’s legacies to the town, the “Penny Brig” – a footbridge across the Spey. It even snowed for the visitors, though David’s hope that it would be severe enough to prolong their stay wasn’t to be fulfilled.
St Drostan famously blessed the waters of the Lour in the sixth century. Was David tempted to do the same? “I had something prepared in case I was asked,” he says, “but the occasion didn’t arise.”
Some might think a’bunadh is blessing enough. |
