Travelers touring Scotland are often drawn to Kirkwall, home to a variety of attractions including the famous great stone circles of Stenness and Brodgar, a UNESCO world heritage site. Also popular is Balfour Castle on the island of Shapinsay, which is available for rent.
A quick 25-minute ferry ride from Kirkwall, the principal city and capital of the 70 or so Orkney Islands, Balfour castle stands today much like it did centuries ago, dominating a great deal of the island.
Originally built as home to the Balfour family, once a big name in the trade of tea and spices, upkeep is an ongoing process and that costs money – a lot of money. Simply maintaining the structure is expensive. Adding features found in modern buildings like electrical wiring, heating and cooling has a price tag running in the ￡millions.Now a part-time home to the Zawadski family, the castle offers tours, as renovations are underway to maintain and restore the structures and grounds to their original magnificence.
To fund those efforts, hunting parties come from around the world, landing their private jets at the Kirkwall airport, often reserving space years in advance. The idea is to keep the castle open to the public well into the future with self-financed activities and functions.
Available to rent when the family is not in residence for about $3500 per night, Balfour castle is also available for luncheons, dinners or a traditional Orkney farmhouse tea.
I must admit that despite my name I’ve never been much into whiskey. Rum? Yes. Beer? Yes. Wine? Yes. Absinthe? Yes. Mead? Oh yes! But whiskey has never really been on my radar.
A taste of 25-year-old Scapa whiskey changed all that.
Scapa prides itself as being the second northernmost Scotch whisky distillery in the world. Highland Park Distillery beats it by less than a mile. There are more northern whiskey distilleries in Scandinavia, but of course those aren’t Scotch whisky distilleries.
The Scapa distillery was founded in 1885 and sits on the southern shore of Mainland Orkney. I met with Ian Logan, International Brand Ambassador for Chivas Brothers, to take a look around this distillery that’s otherwise closed to the public.
As we entered, Logan explained that Scapa is a small operation that produces 120,000 liters of single malt whisky a year. I thought that sounded like a lot but my guide simply shrugged.
“A major distillery will do that in two weeks,” he said.
Scapa only has three employees who work equipment that’s a mix of the old and new along with a few museum pieces. The mill, for example, is 75 years old and was built by a company that no longer exists. Their still is a Lomond still from the 1930s and the only one still in operation. This equipment works just fine for a small distillery like Scapa so there’s no reason to change it.
“A distillery is all about consistency,” Logan explained.
After the sifting and milling, a combination of local spring water, sugar, and starch is poured into the mash as it’s slowly turned. Two more infusions of water follow. Fermentation takes 135 hours and then it’s sent to the Lomond still to be distilled.
%Gallery-161374%After the whisky cools, it’s put into 190 liter casks on site.
“Not many places fill their own casks these days. Most send it to a central point,” Logan said.
The casks are all American white oak, which lends a vanilla flavor. As Logan took me around the rows of casks in their warehouse, I noticed most of them were stamped “Jack Daniels.” According to U.S. law, barrels may only be used once. They are then sold to the UK where they’re reused. Used casks are actually better for Scapa’s purposes because that first use gets rid of the stronger flavors and later uses give a mellower whisky.
Casks are reused three times for single malt whisky after coming from the U.S., and then are used for blends.
“It’s a terrible analogy but a cask is like a tea bag. The more you use it the less you get from it!” Logan joked.
Logan then sat me down to try their 16-year-old and 25-year-old samples. I lack the vocabulary of the connoisseur, so let me just say that I found both to be mellow, smooth and rich with a velvety texture. I could certainly taste the vanilla that comes from the American oak, along with hints of other flavors I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Logan offered me some water to mix with it but I found this diluted the delicate flavor. This newbie drinks his whisky straight.
If you can’t find Scapa at your local liquor store, you can order it from many online retailers and also find it as one of the elements of the popular Ballantine blend.
This summer’s weather patterns continue to astound me, between heat waves, hailstorms and the mighty Derecho, which was said to be the storm to end all storms before it narrowly missed New York City last week.
Today’s Photo of the Day is proof of even more global weirding: leaves changing color in Italy … IN JULY. As Flickr user Aviv reports from Venice, “One day it’s too hot to be outside, the other day it’s windy and leaves are falling.” Yup, sounds like my summer too.
Have you captured any photos of summer abnormalities lately? Upload your travel shots to the Gadling Flickr Pool and your image could be selected as our Photo of the Day.
The stadium where gladiators used to hack away at one another to cheering crowds has developed a distinct slant, with one side being 40 centimeters (15.7 inches) lower than the other. Archaeologists have been studying the tilt for a year and have confirmed that it is real and could pose a threat to the monument’s stability. They theorize that the concrete base on which the Colosseum rests may be cracked.
Currently, experts are figuring out what rescue plan, if any, they will suggest to their cash-strapped government.
It’s been a bad couple of years for Italy’s monuments. Despite an expensive restoration, the Colosseum has been crumbling, although not as much as disaster-ridden Pompeii. That ancient city has seen a couple of walls and buildings collapse entirely.
Hopefully a solution will be found to save these ancient Roman ruins without burdening Italy with even more debt.
If you were given a blind taste test, could you tell the difference between a $10 bottle of wine and a $20 bottle or even a $50 bottle? Last year, I listened to a Freakonomics podcast, in which Steve Levitt set out to determine if his friends and colleagues could tell the difference between good wine and swill and the results of the experiment confirmed what I’ve always suspected about many wine snobs: they’re full of crap.
Leavitt held a dinner party and invited fellow wine enthusiasts to taste a variety of wines without letting them see the labels. But he threw them a curveball by telling them that inexpensive wines were $50 bottles, and, predictably, everyone in the group scored the bogus $50 wines higher than the authentically pricey ones, which Leavitt introduced as cheap or mid-price range.
In the podcast, the authors also cite Robin Goldstein, who published a study detailing research from 6,000 blind wine tests that concluded that when people don’t know the price of the wine, they do not derive any additional enjoyment from expensive wines compared to cheaper ones. So while many people need to know they’re drinking an expensive wine to enjoy it, I’m the opposite – I really enjoy a wine if I get a good deal on it.I’m not claiming that all wines are created equal, but my point here is that you shouldn’t have to spend a lot of money for decent wine. I spent three months in Europe this year, mostly in the Mediterranean, and now that I’m back in the U.S., it’s depressing how wine is valued as a treat or a luxury item in most restaurants Stateside. Even a glass of crap or mediocre wine in most restaurants is going to set you back at least $5. But in Spain, Italy, Greece and in many other parts of the world, you can drink basic table wine for next to nothing.
In Praise of Cheap Wine
In Palma de Mallorca, I had a very nice glass of Spanish wine, with a generous pour, at the Bar Major (see right) in an indoor market for all of 1€. At the Osteria Da Anguilinu, a very nice little restaurant in Lecce, Italy, a quarter liter of the house wine also costs, you guessed it, 1€ (See video below). In the south of France, you can walk into a supermarket and fill your own jug with table wine for, again, 1€. And on the Greek island of Samos, we bought some delicious bottles of sweet local wine from a vintner named Manolis, right off the back of his truck for 4€ and were later told that we got ripped off. (See video below)
In Italy and Greece, even if you’re eating on a beach or in another place with a great view, you can still usually order an inexpensive carafe of table wine. And to be clear, when I refer to cheap wine here, I’m talking about drinkable stuff, not the jug wine you see alcoholics throwing back in bus terminals and alleyways.
But here in the good old U.S.A., glasses and bottles of wine cost a pretty penny. Even at Noodles & Company, a fast food joint, a glass of mediocre wine will cost you nearly $6 with tax. Why?
I think the primary reason is that wine isn’t the deeply ingrained part of our culture that it is in European countries, where babies practically guzzle the stuff from their bottles. Here, wine is still associated with the Grey Poupon country club set, but on the other side of the pond, everyone drinks it, no matter whether they clean sewers or run a multinational company.
U.S. business owners also tend to price their food reasonably to try to entice customers while hoping to make a larger profit margin off the drinks. When customers peruse a restaurant’s menu, either in person or online, they tend to formulate an opinion on how pricey it is based on the food prices, even though the drinks can cost nearly as much.
Also, we don’t consume the same volume of wine that Europeans do, so there is no volume discount. According to the Wine Institute, Americans drink just 9.4 liters of wine per capita annually, compared to 45.7 liters in France, 42.1 in Italy and 27 liters in Greece. Interestingly enough, those party animals in the Vatican top the chart with a whopping 54 liters consumed per person per year.
The same volume discount concept applies to beer in beer-drinking countries. In most parts of Germany, you can buy a half-liter mug of great beer for about €3-4, because bars assume you’ll be drinking several of them. So if we want cheaper wine and beer, we apparently need to drink much more of both.
Perhaps we need a political candidate to draw attention to this problem in the same way Jimmy McMillan did with his The Rent is Too Damn High Party candidacies for governor and senator in New York State. I don’t see a The Wine Is Too Damn Expensive party candidate getting into the White House anytime soon, but it can’t hurt.
Of course, there are other items that are very cheap here and ridiculously expensive in Europe, like car rentals and the price of gas, for example. Given the choice between cheap alcohol and cheap gas, I would be hard pressed to pick between the two. How about you?
(First image by Roger Salz on Flickr, second image and videos by Dave Seminara)