Customer Reviews

Scotch: Whisky of Scotland in Fact and Story

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When I left Scotland 30 years ago, a relative gave me this book and no matter where I am, I never lose it. Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart's humorous and idiosyncratic story of whisky presents a time capsule of Scotland that only two generations still living can relate to, but it evokes a common experience, that of hard work and adversity, of faith and of loyalty, that all can enjoy.

Buy this book if you want to learn facts about whisky that no one else will know. Buy this book if you love stories about the men who founded great whisky empires, like Thomas Dewar, John Haig, Alexander and John Walker and William Grant. Buy this book if you love hearing about smugglers and gaugers, kings and conquerors, and if you are curious about what Thomas Jefferson, Rudyard Kipling and Robert Louis Stevenson all said about whisky.

In terms of style, do not look for tables, charts or scores. Just pretend you are sitting by a log fire in a crumbling stone Bed and Breakfast in Balmenach, by the foot of the Cromdale Hills in Scotland. As you rest your weary legs after a long day on the hills, you hear an old man tell stories to his family about whisky. You can't help but fall into a trance as you hear him tell stories of romance and legend, and you have an unquenchable desire to drink each whisky as he tells its story.

Here are some sample sentences from the book that illustrates the author's unique and sometimes irreverent approach to whisky. "Distilleries sought to enhance the value of their own whisky by giving it the name of Glenlivet, the glen watered by the Livet. Such was the wide abuse of the name that Glenlivet became known sarcastically as the longest glen in Scotland." Of the Glenfiddich distillery, Lockhart tells a story of an Inland Revenue visit by the taxman, who was perplexed by all the "latin and mathematical text books lying all over the distillery. On asking to whom they belonged, he was told they were the property of the stillman, the maltman and the tunroom man." All three were the sons of William Grant who went on to found their own distilleries.

Thanks to this jewel of a book, I know how to make the classic hot toddy. I know why whisky was used for last rites on battlefields and who used whisky successfully to treat infants with smallpox. Yes, sometimes the author gets caught up in the intricacies of pricing and taxing, and yes there are moments of sentimentality, but this is more than made up for by the passion of his sheer love of whisky and the country that makes it.