2015: Year of... Less Whisky

In February 2014 a good friend and I went on an ice climbing trip to Central Norway. The trip was marked by temperatures that averaged well above zero at sea level. Where we were based - in a fjord-side village a couple of hours from Bergen - all the low-level icefalls slowly turned to waterfalls before our eyes. 

It was colder, up high

Undeterred, we went higher and higher in search of good ice: driving further up the fjords day after day, until in the last few days we were climbing in valleys up in the great high plateau-wilderness that extends across much of central Norway. We found plenty to climb in the end.

All of the above is just by way of scene-setting for the true subject of this post: whisky.  On our way out to Norway, at a duty free shop at Gatwick airport, we bought a bottle of whisky,  a 12-year-old Japanese single malt.

Sipping it slowly in our fjord-side cabin each evening after the day's climbing, we began to understand why Japanese whisky is now considered an equal of Scotch. I'd always enjoyed the odd dram but this was something new: a beautifully balanced product of Japanese whisky-making craft.

To cut a long story short, that bottle of Japanese whisky sparked an interest in me - bordering on obsession - to learn more about this varied and complex spirit. And yes, to taste a lot of it. 

In the months after our return from Norway I tasted whiskies from Sweden, South Africa, Canada, the U.S., India, England and Ireland as well as a wide variety of types of Scotch. 

Thalassa

At the height of my obsession, in June, I sailed around the western islands of Scotland in the 3-masted sailing ship Thalassa with a group of slightly mad, mainly Dutch whisky enthusiasts, having a whale of a time and stopping at the distilleries of Islay, Jura, Arran and Campbeltown. 

A bewildering variety of whisky was tried: peated and unpeated Islays, sherried Speysiders, whiskies from the Highlands and Lowlands and the Islands. We tasted a 1970s Ardbeg, and a rare and beautiful 1979 Dallas Dhu which we drew straight from the barrel in a dunnage warehouse at Springbank distillery on the Kintyre peninsular.

I've bought quite a lot of whisky this year, too. Really quite a lot. Enough to keep me in drams for some considerable time. 

Why mention all this in a blog that purports to be about my preparations for the Marathon? The reason is that, partly to help me stop smoking and partly to give my liver a well-earned rest, I have resolved that from tonight I will not drink any whisky or any other alcohol for a month. 

So the next post will be written by a non-smoking, non-drinking James.