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Small screen whiskies

I don’t know if anyone can help me with this one but back in the early 90s when I first started collecting whisky I recall watching a couple of episodes from a documentary series on TV.

The programme was about whisky and Scotland. I recall one of the episodes I watched was about Islay and I think it featured Bowmore Distillery, it went on to explain the lives of some of the families on the Island back in the old days.

The programme gave an example of a family who drank three barrels of whisky at a wake. When a rival family, who had only drunk two barrels the week before at their family wake found this out they carried out the funeral and wake again so that they could out do their rivals and drank four barrels of whisky!

In another episode it followed a salvage worker who dived on wrecks recovering old bottles of whisky, he recovered a few bottles from one wreck, drank a few and then sent the remaining bottles to auction where they reached a good price.

I don’t know what the name of the documentary was or how many programmes were in the series but I would love to find out so that I could get hold of a copy of it again and watch them all, Hope this rings a bell with any of your readers as I would be grateful for any information.

Kevin Bennett
Nuneaton Warwickshire

Release the spirit

While recently taking a flight from Gatwick airport I paid my normal visit to the whisky shop and purchased a Highland Park 21 Years Old among others. When arriving back home I opened it with much anticipation and was just about to discover possibly one of the best drams I had experienced in a number of years.

The nose of citrus orange and wonderful chocolate on the palate and wonderful smoky finish was something I had to share with several friends and everyone said the same thing I have to buy a bottle, and there is the problem you can only purchase this at the airport duty free shop.

Surely something so beautiful and stunning as this whisky should be available to everybody and not just those of us that travel.

The saddest thing of all is that I’m guessing that most distilleries are doing something similar and therefore lots of us whisky drinkers could be missing out on some stunning drams due to this.

Tony Abbott
Sassenachs Dram whisky Club (Via email)