Evan Cattanach’s business card titles him “Master Distiller Emeritus Diageo.” He wears a kilt and swirls 30-year-old Brora single malt two inches beneath his nose. A smile washes over him as the whisky takes him to the brambled seaside where he stood in 1977, the year the malt was made. In a brogue thick like peat, he tells me about the wild raspberries that grow alongside the distillery.
I can smell the berries in the whisky.
“This is a ghost,” he says, meaning the distilling has long since ceased—Brora closed in 1983. After 2013, there will be no more, which somewhat justifies the $399-a-bottle price tag.
We sample eight single malts, the oldest of which has spent as many decades resting in a barrel on the Isle of Islay as I have spent breathing, eating, and (in the most recent of those decades) drinking whisky. Each one of these bottles has a story, and each glass is unlike any other. The 25-year-old Talisker smells as wet as the ocean. The Lagavulin Distiller’s Edition is heavy with the aroma of clove-roasted oranges.
The 28-year-old Port Ellen (another ghost) is a sweet, smoky caramel.
These whiskys will be released to the American market in late October.
As whiskys wash down our throats and Evan’s tales of making the malts grow taller, all I can think about is raiding the piggy bank to score me one of those bottles of Broar. I take the subway home, to save money.
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