There’s only one way to drink whisky properly, insists Annabel Meikle, whisky consultant and educator, and that’s on your own terms and without regard for any supposed rules.
You can have it with water, with ice, in a highball, as a cocktail, frozen, or even with green tea…
Green tea?
“When I travelled through Asia,” Annabel recalls, “people were drinking whisky with green tea, with ice and with water. And, you know, if you’re in a warm, humid climate, that’s a really pleasant way to enjoy it.”
“The most important thing,” she says, “is to drink whisky in the way you like it and what’s appropriate to the occasion.”
By her own admission, Annabel’s been “around the whisky block”. She started in the industry working behind the bar at The Vaults, the Scotch Malt Whisky Society’s original home in Leith.
“It was really by fluke. I’d been working in a delicatessen, and the guys in the deli said: ‘You must go to this place. It’s absolutely fantastic.’ And I walked into The Vaults, and there was this huge, big room with log fires and Chesterfield sofas.
“And I just thought this is my world. But they didn’t really have a job. So I said: ‘Well I can work on the bar.’ And I did a couple of shifts on the bar, and I made sandwiches for the chef who used to buy cheese from me. And that was it.”
From the Scotch Malt Whisky Society, Annabel became a global brand ambassador for Glenmorangie, a whisky that has a special place in her heart.
“My grandfather was a Glenmorangie drinker. And when my father met my mum, that was the first whisky that he drank. It was the first whisky, I hate to say it, that I dipped my finger in when I was a wee nipper.”
Many years on, and Annabel feels “very passionately about getting people to understand whisky, because there’s an awful lot of supposed rules about liking whisky; and you can only drink it in a certain way at a certain time of and day; and you generally have to be a man. There’s a lot of that, which I think you can just sweep out of the way.”
“I feel I almost have a duty to get people to understand and like whisky on their terms,” Annabel continues. “And I take it as a bit of a personal challenge to find a whisky that somebody [who says they don’t like whisky] will like, whether it’s soft and gentle or whether it’s a big smoky, peaty monster. There’s something in there for everybody.”
Join John as Annabel takes him back over her whisky journey and introduces him to three incredible whisky and food pairings:
Clynelish and Caerphilly cheese
Glenmorangie and really, dark 85 percent cocoa chocolate
Ardnamurchan and Kielbasa (this one produced in Portobello by the award-winning East Coast Cured charcuterie company)
And share in a passion that sometimes transcends vocabulary, and can only be expressed in simple three letter utterance: “Mmm, mmm, mmm…”
Slàinte!
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Socials: @C2GWhisky | @JohnRossBeattie
Creator & producer: David Holmes
Art work & design: Jess Robertson
Music: Water of Life (Never Going Home)
Vocals: Andrea Cunningham
Guitars: John Beattie
Bass: Alasdair Vann
Drums: Alan Hamilton
Bagpipes: Calum McColl
Accordion: Gary Innes
Music & Lyrics: Andrea Cunningham & John Beattie
Recorded & mixed by Murray Collier at La Chunky Studios, Glasgow, Scotland
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