Well! It has been quite the week: a whisky distillery, encounters with the Church of Scotland, my first British breakfast, and a ceilidh. I'll try to divide them up into a few posts instead of rambling on in one ridiculously long entry. I suppose we'll just do this chronologically. Now that I've gotten into sort of a routine and the daily grind of classes and homework (well let's be honest, I don't always get to the homework) the days all sort of blend together and before you know it I've been here almost a month! Seriously, it's February, when did that happen? It seems this semester is just going to fly by; I had better get cracking on all the things I want to do and that long list of places I want to visit.
Speaking of visiting, last Saturday we went on of the International Student Center's day trips to go visit the distillery at Aberfeldy. It was perfect weather for the two hour drive. Clear, bright blue, sunny skies - not a rain cloud in sight. The scenery alone on the drive up to Aberfeldy was worth the 12 pounds for the ticket. Lots of rolling hills and mountains off in the distance and more sheep than I could possibly begin to count. We saw at least a thousand sheep. seriously. Probably more, actually. A large group of them were grazing in an enormous turnip patch, which of course made me think of my father. (Anybody who knows him will know of his great fondness for all root vegetables, especially turnips and rutabagas) I tried to take a few pictures out the window of the van, but was not too successful. Here's one from the drive home:
The tour itself was fairly interesting. It's nice to now know about how whisky's made and the difference between single malt and blended whiskies and all that, but I don't think I'll be headed to any more distillerys anytime soon. There really wasn't much to see as far as the distilling process goes, just lots of various containers of fermenting grains and liquid. mmmm...let me tell you, this place smelled lovely, if you like the smell of fermenting grains anyway.
After the tour, we got to investigate the kind of silly museum they had set up. One exhibit had you try to guess different smells (leather, heather, smoke, woody, and digestive biscuit, e.g. Yes that's right, digestive biscuit) that might be in the nose of a whisky. A really neat part of the museum was a display of what the blending room of Dewar's first master blender might have looked like.
We did get to sample some of the whisky at the end. My friend and I each tried a different one. Mine was quite smooth and very nice. Hers on the other hand, though it had a very interesting flavor (kind of like heather) it was a bit hard to drink.
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