Devonians try to drive Dartmoor whisky plan onto rocks Devonians are up in arms after plans for a whisky, or possibly whiskey, distillery on Dartmoor were derided as “too Scottish”. Or possibly too Japanese.. Or maybe even too Irish.* Princetown Distillers has submitted plans for a £4m hooch factory in the town of Princetown, slap bang in the middle of the Dartmoor National Park. …
> As a West Country sort I'd just like to say it's good to have a hobby that gets you out of the house.
And I hope you've been enjoying riding your motorbike.
In the UK Whisky is made from grain (barley wheat, rye or maize) and is 3 years in an oak barrel or more. Whiskey is any old shit. Scotch is whisky that is distilled in Scotland. Malt is from barley so that counts a whisky.
We dont give a toss what the rest of the world do now.
"....In the UK Whisky..... Whiskey is any old shit."
Very polite. Anyway, Irish whiskey may be distilled on the island of Ireland, that includes Northern Ireland. Irish whiskey was made long before Scotch, is less well know than Scotch because the Irish refused to lower quality and use the the (Irish invented) Coffey Still, a continuous and much cheaper process requiring blending to put some flavour back.
Rather sadly, Scottish companies are now opening Irish Distilleries based, no doubt on quantity before quality principles, so the differences will diminish. But I hope they don't force Irish to become "any old shit" just yet.
Not so much. Glen Breton whisky is distinctly not Scotch (as it's made in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Canada). It does, however, use the spelling whisky.
Incidentally (and brought on by your legal reference) it is the only single-malt whisky in the world, after having won a court case declaring "single malt" to be incidental to the process and not a distinct feature owned by Scotch.
@wolfetone Actually it may come down to the heritage of the makers in the US. A quick check revealed that our bottles have both spellings, for instance Maker's Mark uses bourbon whisky and Knob Creek has bourbon whiskey. Not that it matters to us, a rose by any other name and all that.
Incidentally (and brought on by your legal reference) it is the only single-malt whisky in the world, after having won a court case declaring "single malt" to be incidental to the process and not a distinct feature owned by Scotch.
Ehhh??? "Single malt" is simply a term that means the hooch comes from a single distillery. It is not and never has been a term exclusively applied to whisky from Scotland.
The Scottish Scotch producers took Glen Breton to court over the use of 'single malt' to describe the product and 'Glen' in it's name. They proposed Glen Breton was trying to make it sound like it was a Scotch from Scotland. Initially, they won, however the Supreme Court of Canada eventually said there wouldn't be any confusion and let Glen Breton do it's thing.
Pretty silly, all things considered.
In fact single malt is what it says; it is made from a single malting of barley, as opposed to blended whisky (or whiskey for that matter) which is made from a blend of several maltings, typically to improve the taste (in my sarcastic mind, covering up the poor taste of one malting by diluting it with others!)
Single malt has nothing to do with coming from just one distillery; most distilleries make both single malt whisky (or whiskey) and blended entirely from their own stock.
I come in peace. When we were kids, we made up alternative lyrics to radio jingles. I have adjusted the spellings in a song that went with a jingle tune for peanut butter:
Whisky, whiskey, best by far;
Creamy and smooth to the bottom of the jar;
Tastes so good, you'll want more;
Buy some more at your grocery store.
Whisk(e)y!
Should please everybody. And as a descendant of long-ago booze merchants from Devon, I'll have you West Country types know that I'm of two minds about your fresh air hobbies.
@EGG
The Scottish Whisky Asshats (SWA), bless their cold calculating little hearts, claim against Glenora Distillers in Cape Breton, New Scotland was about the "Glen" in Glen Breton. The SWA ultimately lost their ridiculous claim.
Pardon the Wiki ref, but it *is* accurate:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenora_Distillers#Litigation
AC because the SWA are a litigious bunch (it'd be recursively amusing if they launched legal action complaining of that description).
P.S. Nova Scotia is having a boom in wineries, microbreweries and distilleries. It's getting amazing. My poor liver.
So, does this mean the summary removal of anything other than roundhouses?
> the isle of Tobermory, where the CBBC show "Ballamory" was filmed
Totally agree. Who gives a damn about how it sounds, what the distillery looks like, is there an 'e' somewhere or not: it's all about one thing - the taste. If they are making something that tastes like Bonnie Prince Charlie threw up in his boot and someone left it in a barrel and sold to Tesco, then they deserve nothing. However if they can produce a whisky that even approximates a malt like Old Pulteney Vintage 1989 then take the jobs, take the money and don't forget to say thank you.
As another West Country sort I can't help but wonder how many of the objectors were doing so from second homes in Devon. Coming from the Somerset/Devon/Dorset border I'd say many people would welcome something that would boost the local economy, attract more visitors* and create a few jobs, as well as providing an alternative to apples.
That said mine's a Jura...
*Except when I'm trying to cross the sodding 303 in summer.
Having spent the <5 mins required to drive through the entire town in Streetview, I can confirm that there are no pagodas in the town, so can perhaps understand their concerns.
On the other hand, the vast majority of the houses in the town are either terraced with render (Victorian era?), or really crap 50's-ish semis that look ghastly, IMHO, I think a nice pagoda building may make a delightful addition to local vernacular. Or they could repurpose a derelict building in the area (possibly extending it if it's not big enough), perhaps incorporating some smell-reduction measures in the design. If not, the brewery's current location isn't exactly intrusive on the village itself so why should they give a flying toss what a distillery looks like.
I seem to remember that the chokey is going to close? Or at least be downgraded. Couldn't they just put the distillery there - very strongly vernacular architecture. And it's not exactly the prettiest building. I suspect most of the ugly new housing in Princetown is quarters for the screws and their families.
Quite - thanks to the National Trust, Prince Charles and the second homers who want to keep everything in chocolate box poverty, there's precious little allowed to happen in Cornwall and Devon.
There's already a Cornish whiskey (yes they spell it that way) with the very Cornish name of 'Hicks and Healey'. Haven't tasted it, but I'm sure the radon adds a special something.
There is actually quite a bit of modern housing in Princetown. A couple of new estates went up in about 2005-ish. Before that, there's some probably-1950s stuff, and then the older buildings where you're most likely to find something half-decent. House prices are also what you'd expect on a fairly ugly estate, not at all like more desirable Dartmoor villages.
However, any time you're in the area, the Dartmoor Brewery's Jail Ale is an excellent pint. If they can produce a chaser to match, this local won't say no.
ObLocalFact. The prison has (or recently had) a writer-in-residence. Well, not physically in residence, but an official post: I guess she was there literarily rather than literally. I found out when I learned that my new neighbour downstairs (where I lived until recently) was that writer.
"Scottish architecture is suddenly so different from English? What silliness."
Not silliness at all. British - or let's say insular to include Irish - regional architectures are distinctive. Local history and materials affect it. It would be madness, for instance, to attempt Cotswold or Pennine coursed masonry with Antrim basalt.
All areas of the UK have distinctive architecture, or as you eluded to - use to have.
Thing is this looks like it's out on it's own, not in the actual village so it wouldn't look out of place - but then again they don't seem to be objecting to a distillery, just the cosmetics so easily enough fixed.
I just hope they don't end up with random grey panels under windows which seems to have become the latest architectural trend on houses in my area,it looks **** !
The irony shirley is the fact there are many Scottish castles that seem to be modelled on Dartmoor prison.
I bet most of the people who objected are those bastard newcomers like me!
I should add I didnt object - I was a member of the Scotch Malt Whisky Society for many years until it became too popular and having experimented with distilled liquors made with love and care from all over the work would welcome some local whisky. I'd make it myself but for those damned EU laws the EU forced on the UK in 1823 to piss the Scots off. At least with brexit we will be free of the boot stamping on the human face - forever. I'm sure leapard print heels will be much nicer.
Cruel and unusual punishment, I'd claim, unless they used odour control towers to reduce the whiff
From the linked article: "The proposal is to build a 30-metre an artificial emissions tower to reduce the distillery's environmental impact."
That seems like a fancy synonym for chimney. Or exhaust duct. Or... the target is an exhaust port located at the top of a raised structure...
Obviously you're welcome to put ice in any drink you want. It's your drink after all. But putting ice in good single malt whisky is still wrong.
A bit of water is fine. Some whiskies taste amazingly different with the addition of a bit of water, and so you should probably try them both ways before deciding. If I'm going to drink Laphroaig, that's how I'll take it. I also have a bottle of cask strength Talisker that isn't really drinkable without water. In an ideal world the water should be soft and shouldn't be too cold.
The reason not to use ice, is not that it'll water the whisky, but that it'll chill it. Which means you don't get the flavours. Almost all flavour comes from up your nose, the tongue only being able to detect salt, sweet, sour, bitter and umami. You need all those lovely chemicals to be nice and warm, so they can waft up yer hooter, and make niceness.
Which is why I prefer my whisky from a brandy glass - so my hand can warm it up.
If you want to drink something cheap, especially with a mixer, then ice is no problem. But if you're paying double the price (or more) for good quality stuff, then presumably you're drinking for the flavour, and so ice is a no-no.
Beeb report with pictures of the plans here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-38755219
Looking at pictures of Scottish distilleries on Shutterstock most seem to be rendered white which would match Princetown buildings and the tower on the plans is said to be purely cosmetic. There seems to be no good reason not to have produced a design which would have respected local styles and wouldn't have been out of keeping with Scottish distilleries in either the lack of tower or the colour of render.
In the past year, I've had acceptable single malts from Brittany and several parts of Germany. I don't know whether the distilleries have pagodas, though. Maybe they don't, and that's why their products still have a way to go before they could show their face in Scotland.
"Strictly speaking distilleries don't have pagodas, they have a "Doig's Ventilator", or a cupola."
I'm glad somebody mentioned this. It is definitely a cupola (only one roof). Pagodas have multiple tiers of roofs.
However, the word may derive from a root meaning "temple" or "place of good fortune", so it could be appropriate.
On the other hand the Russian word pagoda means weather, and Dartmoor has a lot of that too.
'Devon' somehow comes from the name of the tribe who lived here* - the Dumnonii. I'd suggest the contraction of this into Devon proves some form of distilling has been going on for years round here.
* apparently its cos they spoke brythonic (gaelic) round here and Defnas means men of Domnonia
For Princetown at least.
As (probably) the only El Reg reader who actually lives in Princetown, I'd just like to say how delighted I am to see a mention of our humble hamlet grace these hallowed pages. I fear that it will be the proverbial cold day in hell before it happens again.
Should there be any fine upstanding reporters from The Register reading these comments who would like further details on this ongoing crisis of international import, I would be willing to tell you all about it.
At great length.
In teethgrindingly tedious detail.
Hey, don't judge me, I live in the middle of Dartmoor. We've got to make our own entertainment up here.
Just be glad it isn't still spelled "usquebaugh".
I wouldn't put ice in a good whisky, the chill kills the nose, which as others have remarked, is important. A touch of water often helps bring out the full flavour.
And yes, the best glass is one like a snifter, because so much of the "taste" actually is smell.
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