Pour and Explore, with Derek Kingwell.
If you’re thinking malt whisky then perhaps you should think Bowness. For a new shop on the shores of Windermere at Queen’s Square is offering a ‘taste of the lochs in the Lakes’.
The Malt Lounge is a modern, bright but still cosy emporium of all things liquid, especially Scottish single malt whisky - a place to spend not only some of your time but some of your hard-earned cash. Believe me, you will enjoy the experience.
It takes me back more than ten years to my ‘whisky days’ as manager of the whisky shop in the country at that time, in Soho – which was owned by Jack and Wallace Milroy.
Jack ran the business and Wallace wrote the best-selling Malt Whisky Almanac that took Japan and the USA by storm in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
I’ve always wanted to relive some of that atmosphere and the minute I walked into The Malt Lounge I knew it was possible.
Not since my role as manager for those magnificent Milroy brothers have I come across such a display of my country’s nectar so far north in England.
This Lakeland treasure chest of all things bright and beautifully Scottish offers more than 100 malts, with an interesting mixture of blends from Scotland, Ireland, America and Canada.
Owner Joanne Harris, of Windermere Wine Stores fame, has also added a selective choice of wines, including mead and fruit wines, and other fashionable spirits. But the main emphasis is well and truly on whisky.
To feed my excitement for this ‘Aladdin’s Cave’ and relive my whisky past I volunteered to help Rebecca Sproson with a Saturday malt tasting.
She had enthusiastically chosen three lesser-known gems to tickle her potential customers’ tastebuds from independent bottlers Gordon and MacPhail, of Elgin.
Some creamy Orkney cheddar, oatcakes and Robbie Byrne (honest!), an ex-Royal Scots Dragoon Guard Piper, all helped to add some authentic Scottish bonhomie.
Lucky shoppers had a real treat savouring an 18-year-old Benromach at 40 per cent from Forres, on Speyside, that was traditionally big with some characteristic flowery touches.
A different Speyside from Carron was the Gordon and MacPhail Connoisseurs Choice 1991 Imperial at 40 per cent that caught many by surprise, being much lighter and showing less peat than previous older versions.
The real star though was the Lowland malt, Rosebank 1989, also at 40 per cent, another Connoisseurs Choice and one many were hesitant to taste simply because it didn’t come from the Highlands or Islands.
Typically lighter and with a refreshing zing of lemon syllabub, it cut beautifully through the creamy Orkney cheese, proving to many who had tasted it for the first time that whisky does go with cheese and can be a real talking point with your guests at the end of a special dinner.
It was deservingly the best buy of the day, outselling the other two malts and proving there is a lot more to Lowland malt than you might expect.
- The Malt Lounge, which also offers a ‘send a gift anywhere’ facility, can be contacted on e-mail (sales@maltlounge,co.uk) or website at: www.maltlounge.co.uk, or call 015394-48333.
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