So one day not too long ago, says Neil Urquhart, a man walks to the store. Gordon & MacPhail's in Moray, on South Street in Elgin. A temple in the whole world of malt whisky. More than 1,000 varieties, pretty much every scotch currently available Britain, plus some that aren't, at least not everywhere else.
Anyway, says Urquhart, who was working in the shop at that time, the fourth generation of his family to join the firm, this chap walked in, more or less off the street: "He knew what he wanted, mainly. A special Ardbeg, an older Macallan. I guided him a tiny little for the others. He bought four bottles of whisky. For GBP20,000. He was Taiwanese."
Connoisseurs will come in here, says David, a third generation Urquhart, standing in said store - a strong, reassuring type of place in a strong, encouraging sort of town at the top of Speyside, home to half of Scotland's 100-plus whisky distilleries - and every month, a few of them will fall GBP5,000.
It would, I presume, be challenging to not spend money here, you like whisky and for those who have it.
There are whiskies that are more unusual, from distilleries you quite probably have not heard of: Caol Ila, Mortlach, Auchentoshan, BenRiach, Pulteney. There are single-cask bottlings, taken from (as the name suggests) one, rather than - as is usual - multiple casks from the same distillery, "vatted" collectively and married. There are powerful cask-strength bottlings. There are exotic finishes, when a whisky has spent a bit of time in a barrel that once held port, madeira, rum or Italian red wine.
There are bottles at GBP200, GBP400, GBP350. There is also a 55-year-old Dalmore, for GBP7,700.
There are, it seems, lots of people that have cash, and who like whisky.
Scotch is now a multi-billion pound, global phenomenon. A complete world of its own, of books, magazines (Whisky Magazine, Whisky Fire, Malt Advocate), sites (heaps of them, from maltmadness to whisky- brains, spiritofislay to whiskywhiskywhisky), of festivals from Speyside to San Francisco, Stockholm to Singapore. Names for example Dramfest, Whiskygalore, Maltstock.
Its own pros, also: whisky geeks, maltheads. Having a bit of liquorice", and Glenlivet as "recently chopped apple, rhubarb and gooseberries". Talisker is "grilled oily fish in lemon oil"; Benromach "wet grass, butter, ginger and brittle toffee" followed by "lemon custard creams, apricots and pine table polish".
And you will find pubs that specialise in nothing.
"Folks come here," says Minagawa, who himself came to Scotland from Japan years past now, "from everywhere. Absolutely everywhere. Aye." (He really does say "Aye".) "Scots, obviously, and English. Also Germans, Dutch, French. Scandinavians, hugely learned. Japanese. Taiwanese, now. And places you don't anticipate. There was a Czech guy in the other week, understood more about Scotch than most Scots."
All a long way, actually, from the little stone cairn at Upper Drummin, in the hills above the valleys of the rivers Avon and Livet, which indicates the area where in 1824 one George Smith built the distillery that is now widely considered the cradle of the current sector (though not by everybody. Age and tradition are valuable commodities in single malt-acreage; the longer and better your backstory, commonly, the larger your sales).
At any rate, Smith, third of seven kids, banged in an application to build a distillery within months of the 1823 Excise Act that made the whole company legal. "It's safe to assume he learned it from his farmer father and grandpa," says Ian Logan, a global brand ambassador for Glenlivet, now owned by French drinks giant Pernod-Ricard.
"Prohibited stills and whisky smuggling were everywhere, had been since the 15th century, doubtless before. They made cash in what was often a tough existence. It was fairly classy, organised networks, long-distance signs for when the soldiers were seen, all that. Rather a game. People would tell Customs about an illegal still, but only when it was worn out. That way they could purchase a brand new one together with the reward."
We're standing by Smith's cairn, looking down the hill. Below is today's Glenlivet distillery, a monument even in a region where enormous distilleries are two a penny: rows of long warehouses holding tens of thousands of developing barrels; a visitor's centre welcoming 45,000 people a year; a dramatic GBP10m glass-and-timber extension opened last year. With just 10 individuals involved in each creation cycle that is real, Glenlivet could now make, should it so wish, 10m litres of whisky a year. "Those men can go on holiday virtually anywhere on earth, walk into just about any pub, and see something they've made. Astounding.")
Like many matters, Logan says, making whisky is not particularly challenging; making whisky that is great is - quite. First, your barley is malted by you, then drying it and soaking it in water. (At Gordon & MacPhail's pretty small Benromach distillery in Forres, Speyside's lowest, Sandy Forsyth, 40 years in the business, clarifies that it is the peat used in the drying that gives some whiskies - from Islay, for example - their characteristic smokiness.
"The nose and the taste will really shift depending on the place you cut your peat from," Forsyth says. "Peat from down near the shoreline will produce notes like iodine, TCP. Laphroaig's character, that is from the seaweed in the peat. Speyside whiskies are fruitier. Unpeated.")
Next you smash the malted barley in a mill: "Like taking the wrapper off a candy," says Glenlivet's Logan. Then you mash the grist, stirring until sugar is turned to by the starches and adding hot water. Then you certainly pump the resulting liquid, called wort, add yeast, and into a large vat called a washback. Sugar turns to alcohol.
Last come the stills, shapely matters of shining copper. The newest still room at Glenlivet is a soaring, almost churchlike all eminent ceiling space and plate- glass windows looking out on the valley. ("It does," agrees Logan, "feel a little spiritual. Stills work in pairs. In the very first, you warm what comes out of the washback before the alcohol rises as vapour (or the whole lot can simply froth over, ruining everything. "Do that once," says Forsyth at Benromach, "and you may survive. Twice, and you will be rolling casks in the warehouse.")
In the second, or spirit still, you reheat what comes out of the first. The first merchandise, known as foreshots or heads, is not no bad. Nor is the things that comes out towards the finish, known as tails or feints. That which you are where you consider it is going to determine the character of the whisky as surely as the cask, and after is middle cut or the heart it's matured in.
The barley, the water, the yeast. The timing. Steel or wooden washbacks. How the stills are heated by you. And, obviously, the cask."
Whiskymen adore their casks. The spirit have to be developed in oak casks for at least three years, to be called Scotch whisky. The quality of a whisky is dependent on the quality and kind of that cask. Character and the standard of the spirit and the time spent in the cask count too, but less so. Used and re-used, every barrel (Scotch distillers use mostly charred American bourbon casks, plus some Spanish sherry casks) changes a whisky otherwise, adding and subtracting and intermingling flavours, smells, colours.
At this time, it needs to be said, the overwhelming majority of whisky distilled in Scotland will soon be blended, either with other single malts or - much more economical - with whisky made from grain. These are mixtures, your White & Mackays, Dewars, Ballantine 's, Chivas Regals, Johnny Walkers along with the rest. Some are very high quality, aged drinks, others. But in any case, 90% of the Scotch whisky sold around the world is combined.
Single malt, practically unknown until the early 1960s outside Scotland, when it was floated almost as a gimmick, could be holy among connoisseurs in whisky markets that are mature, and status-seekers in newer ones, but the real volume in whisky is combinations. "They'll be around for a long time to return," says Campbell Evans of the Scotch Whisky Association. "The economics of the distilleries rely to them, plus they're the way people get into Scotch, often combined, with cola in Spain, green tea in China."

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