Posts Tagged → knoydart
Commando summer vacations
Few things, few activities are as deeply satisfying to me as summer travels in America, especially across the northeast. Call these trips short vacations, commando vacations, traveling vacations, whatever, they are always fun and invigorating. I am always somewhat dispirited when these trips end.
The goals are to see new places, usually off the beaten path, meet new people, see old American architecture, and explore old towns, small towns, take in new sights. Small town America is quite fabulous, although they are all increasingly becoming “discovered” and populated by down-state summertime residents and tourists, and even the dreaded out-of-state tourists, like me. While there is less to “discover” in these “discovered” small old towns, one benefit of the summertime down-state residents is that they increasingly purchase and rehab the most beautiful Victorian and Federal homes that until recent years fell into increasingly sad disrepair. When these old hulking brick, stone, or beautifully complicated trim wooden buildings are fully returned to their original glory, they are really something to see, to behold, to bask in. Each is a work of art in its own right, and the investors deserve our applause and appreciation. I would like to have an ad hoc summertime picnic on all of their porches.
Although I do not always get the level of accommodation I would prefer on these trips, I can make up for poor overnight conditions by staying out late and getting out early, and bringing my own sheets and pillow cases, just in case. One lesson learned over the decades is Trust the Big Hotel Chains. If you can find them, not always possible in the more remote areas, they are universally clean, comfortable, hygienic, well kept, and generally safe. Whereas, bed-and-breakfast destinations are widely hit or miss, with the misses being gross and uncomfortable, and old family owned “spas” and grandiose Victorian or imitation French estates can be a little sticky and pretentious, or downright gross and pretentious with genuinely weird characters hanging about. Give me the universal American standard of three star or better hotel chain every night possible. Or a car-camping tent site at a state park with flush toilets and showers.
The term for exposing people to new ideas and objects, Education, emerged in 1918. It replaced the long term phrase popular instruction. As the keeper of this blog, I think about the differences between these two concepts, education versus instruction. One of the huge things missing in today’s “education” establishment (overrun with rote partisan indoctrination) is the act of instruction, the conveyance of new skills, new ideas, new ways of appreciating or thinking. And so I like to think that here the reader has an opportunity to encounter some instruction, something new. This sounds like a heavy burden, a heavy lift, until you consider what I am presenting as new here: An Upstate New York distillery, which makes various alcoholic spirits, which I had only read about in Mountain Home Magazine. On this most recent commando vacation, I was able to connect a variety of dots on a map in one afternoon, one of which being this distillery.
Situated above Seneca Lake, the Finger Lakes Distilling Company has a pretty nice pied-à-terre, from which we enjoyed our picnic lunch views over and across the lake. I had just enjoyed a very relaxed tasting inside, and being a lightweight with alcohol, I was in no condition to drive. However, I am no lightweight in terms of weight, and I am always ready to eat…so we sat, ate our food picnic style, and let the cool early summer breeze flow across us while the distillery operation ran all around us. Fascinating to me at least is that this distillery locally sources all of its own grains, flavors; everything they use in their many various products is grown right in the Finger Lakes region. And one of the great joys of connecting the various dots across the Finger Lakes region is driving through the great amount of scenic working farmland and beautifully kept farms that make up that special landscape.
Of the four bottles of rye whisky I sampled, and bought, only one really appeals to my taste; the other three are going to be gifts to friends. What can I say; I have friends with poor palates and poor choices in their friends; no fancy gifts from moi. What I greatly enjoyed is the McKenzie single barrel straight rye whiskey (80% rye and 20% malted barley) aged six years, and finished in a “Pommeau” cask. This is really an outstanding flavor, a world-class product. And at $42.50 a bottle, it is about eight to fifteen dollars less than one would expect to pay for a similar quality product in Scotland, Ireland, or in other parts of America. And though I am not a drinker, as I have become a serious lightweight with age, I do enjoy sampling on location the locally made, sometimes internationally famous, sometimes should-be-internationally-famous whiskeys made in Scotland, Ireland, and occasionally America.
One of my favorite related memories is watching small boats putting in at the Isle of Skye, where they would each buy a couple cases of delicious small batch single malt, and then move on up the coast to the next small distillery, unknown to the outside world, but coveted and seriously in demand among connoisseurs. I happened to be standing high up in the Black Hills of Knoydart with a historic double rifle over my shoulder, hunting red stag, at that moment, and so alcohol was that farthest thing from my mind. But the determined boats way down below, and their sophisticated whiskey buyers, will never leave my mind. What a life.
Anyhow, below are some photos from the Finger Lakes Distilling Company, which despite being a real ongoing concern for some time now, has (bizarrely) not trademarked their unique product or bottle labels. See? This is the real essence of small town, rural America: Family-owned-and-run high quality, with all of the refreshing, remote innocence one hardly ever sees any more. Except maybe in Papua New Guinea, where according to one guy the locals ate Joe Biden’s grandfather with a side of whiskey bottle.
The single malt lacks the peaty flavor of coveted single malts from Scotland. If Upstate New York has any peat for roasting the malted barley, McKenzie should get it and use it
Real strawberry milk by the half gallon at Buttermilk Falls… can a summer day be better spent?
Scotland’s Knoydart, you gotta just go see it
After another visit to the spectacular Knoydart Peninsula in northwest Scotland, I feel compelled to write about it.
Normally it is uncomfortable to broadcast publicly where I have been, but this community is worthy of praise.
If you like to hike, walk, hang out, or just relax in a quiet atmosphere far, far away from civilization, but with the things you have come to depend on or enjoy in day to day life, a few days in Inverie is right for you.
The fishing is mostly limited to five miles of the Inverie River, for Atlantic salmon and sea run trout. This is pay-to -play, not the kind of fishing we do in America.
Also, the hunting is totally different than what we do in America, or in Canada. You must be guided by a “stalker” (no, not the guy who just got out of jail for stalking his ex) and ghillie. You must take the shot they tell you to take, at the red deer they tell you to shoot, even if it is not a trophy (and it is unlikely to be a trophy). You will get charged a lot of money just to go out, hit or miss, although hitting costs even more money. Then, if you like the head or cape of the animal you shot, you must pay for those separately, as well as for the meat. This style of hunting works for Europeans, and it is not my thing. It is unlikely to appeal to the vast number of American hunters.
That said, I was very impressed by the fieldcraft and general fitness of Knoydart’s stalker Jim Brown and his ghillie, Louis. Their knowledge of biology, ecology, forestry, and soil science speaks volumes about what it takes to be a hunting guide in Scotland. In contrast, here in America just about anyone can call himself a hunting guide, with the exception of a few key states like Maine, Montana, Idaho and Alaska.
Thanks for the great memories, men.