READER, A WORD OF ADVICE. IF Charlie Maclean ever invites you round to his house to taste whisky, you should put everything else in your life on hold.
You should not mind if your taxi driver (some more advice: don't even think of driving there for you surely will be unable to drive back) gets lost and takes you half way round the Pentlands. You should not mind if you've just had a hard day at the o
ffice. Because within an hour at Maison Maclean, everything changes: the cares of the world are replaced by a warm, paradisiacal glow.
Some of this has to do with the contents of the bubble-wrapped medicine bottles in boxes piled up at the foot of his writing desk awaiting the formidable attentions of the Maclean nose and its accompanying poetically precise palate. As one of the world's leading whisky writers – Whiskypedia, his new gazetteer of Scottish whisky, four years in the making, is exquisite proof – lashings of singular single malts arrive at his door by every post.
He has been writing about whisky now for close on 30 years: ten books, countless magazine articles, innumerable samplings (some with up to 100 whiskies in a single sitting) and talks and tastings around the world. Self-taught but trained ("in the week that changed my life") by the Scottish Whisky Research Institute in "the sensory evaluation of potable spirits", he has long since been honoured as Keeper of the Quaich ("kipper of the cake") "for services to Scotch over many years". Somehow, along with a distilled knowledge of his special subject, Maclean has acquired an even more valuable gift – the ability to talk about it without being boring.
When you think about it, that's a lot harder than it sounds. If you know, for example, that the main reason a particular whisky tastes the way it does is because of the dimensions of its mash tun and boil-ball spirit stills, the temptation to inflict such knowledge on your listener must be immense. Result? Glazed eyeballs all round.
In Maison Maclean, this doesn't happen. Why not? First, because he is a generous, engaging host: no sooner are you in his writing lair than he is ripping the bubblewrap off those cases of samples, eager to share his enthusiasm. Then there's that enthusiasm itself: although Maclean knows all about the Cratur's chemistry and history – for those who want it, Whiskypedia is packed with all the techie details the true obsessive could need – for him, it's really all about understanding and appreciating the subtleties of its taste.
And that, he insists, is something every last one of us is equipped to do. "Take scent," he says, swirling around a coded Laphroaig he'd been sent to evaluate. "The receptors for scent are hard-wired into the most primitive area of the brain, so ancient that it was formed when we were reptiles – before we even became mammals. This bit of our brain is also the seat of memory and of emotion. This is why smell is the most evocative of our senses – much more so than taste. So when you sample a whisky's aroma, it might trigger all kinds of memories for you. I've often seen people in tears at tastings, rediscovering scents from their childhood, for example."
At this point, I realise, the best way to interview Maclean would be through whisky. After all, he has enough of the stuff, and from all the nearly six decades of his life, to make it feasible. We begin with a Glenfarclas 1957.
I've never tasted anything as wonderful in my life. When it was laid down, Maclean points out, the received wisdom was that after about 12 years whisky didn't improve: it was thought to be "slimy", and distillers were glad to get rid of it.
But while Maclean is swirling it around his glass and describing its scent, my untutored palate can only follow his. "Like a Black Forest gateaux," he begins, "only without the chocolate (yes). Glacé cherries (yes). Dried figs (mmm, perhaps). Perfumed like cold face cream used to take off makeup (no, sorry)." My own brain flails around for similes: for some reason, I'm thinking back to opening up cardboard boxes containing train-track: nothing to do with scent, I realise, but everything to do with anticipation. Because when you sip it, it's like … Like what? "Sweet, then tannic," murmurs Maclean appreciatively. "Treacle toffee, burnt sugar, the crystalline sugar you'd get in espresso coffee. And still that cold cream scent. Gosh, this is about as good as it gets!"
At this point, my attempt at the first-ever interview through the medium of whisky starts to veer off course. We get distracted, Mr Maclean and I. We wander off, away from the direction of his own life (art history degree at St Andrews, a brief spell as a solicitor in Edinburgh, setting up Scotland's first literary agency in the 1980s, ghost-writing, publishing, commercial writing). Instead, we head off on our own whisky trail.
As we drink our way round Scotland's finest drams (a rare Port Ellen 25-year-old here, a cask-strength Talisker there), some sort of elucidation of Scotland's finest industry swims into focus. I start to realise how modern the single malt industry is, how that tempting battery of golden bottles behind most bars is such a recent phenomenon, how there's nothing this nation produces that is in such great demand throughout the world.
All of this is the bigger story, made up of hundreds of smaller ones: stories of innovation, marketing, export drives, from new farm distilleries like Kilchoman on Islay that do everything on site from growing barley to bottling (as they'll start doing next month) to the biggest industrial grain distilleries.
And, because as Maclean point out, "the purpose of Scotch whisky is to give pleasure", there's room in that story for all of us. Slainte!
• Whiskypedia: A Gazetteer of Scotch Whisky by Charles Maclean is published by Birlinn next week, priced £16.99
