Clanlands
Page 4
By yon bonnie banks and by yon bonnie braes,
Where the sun shines bright on Loch Lomond,
Where me and my true love were ever wont to gae,
On the bonnie, bonnie banks o’ Loch Lomond.
Chorus:
O ye’ll tak’ the high road, and I’ll tak’ the low road,
And I’ll be in Scotland a’fore ye,
But me and my true love will never meet again,
On the bonnie, bonnie banks o’ Loch Lomond.
SAM
He’s away. With the fairies. It doesn’t feel like ten in the morning and it doesn’t feel like we are filming. I am enjoying myself so I have another nip of the Speyside with Richard and start to tell him all about how I’ve been approached by whisky distilleries asking me to ‘white-label’ (put my name to a bottle) before realising I actually wanted to make my own.
[Graham: Ah, here we go.]
‘Richard, I know single malt is traditional and steeped in heritage but I’ve found myself drinking more of the Asian blends. [Graham: You treacherous bastard.] Smooth, rich and delicious . . . Sooo, I thought there’s a gap in the market for a good blended Scotch and over the past couple of years my business partner, Alex the German, and I have travelled around Scotland, visiting distilleries from the Lowlands, all the way up to and including Inverness and the Highlands [Graham: all freebies], meeting the people who work hard, pouring their passion into every cask. It was a gruelling trip, many days spent on the road whilst liaising with our international partners and of course, sampling multiple expressions upon each stop. Someone’s gotta do it.’
[Graham: Get ready for THE ADVERT.]
‘We wanted to create something unique, something that takes you home to the Highlands of Scotland: a roaring fire, the wind and rain outside the window. Our logo is the unicorn – Scotland’s national animal, the strongest of all animals. The unicorn is the only beast that can defeat the lion. The unicorn can only be tamed by a virgin. The individual spirit of the unicorn captures my pride and passion for Scotland.’
[Graham: Hate to break it to you, mate – a unicorn isn’t a real animal.]
‘And, in the dead of night I awoke with a revelation. Behold! Sassenach Whisky was born.’
[Graham: Sounds more like an aftershave.]
‘Richard? Can I call you Rich? The Sassenach is a nonconformist, an outsider, and anyone who doesn’t just want to fit in. It’s inspired by the Highland landscape: the ancient peaks, hidden glens, rising morning mist, fresh water and firm oak run deep in its veins.’
[Graham: Oh dear God.]
‘We mature it in Madeira casks so that the underlying rich fruit character is at the forefront of the blend. The nose is packed with citrus fruits, almonds and vanilla. And I’m really proud to say, Rich, it won Double Gold in a blind taste test at the 2020 San Francisco World Spirits Competition, yah, I know, amazing right? We then won another double gold for the bottle design and packaging. That’s a lot of Gold, Richy! But listen, I promise when you taste it, it caresses your palate with peach, apricot, honey and butterscotch and the sweet unmistakable finish of cinnamon and nutmeg . . .
GRAHAM
As your fictional uncle and real friend I advise you to stop with the ‘rising morning mist’ and ‘caressing your palate’ shite! Honestly, he’s always at it, flogging products. The amount of free stuff he gets I imagine his room looks like an outlet store. He’s probably got an Audi in his bathroom.
Believe me, I would love to talk at length about Sam’s whisky (he certainly does), but this would require me to have properly sampled it. Like Richard.
I remember seeing him at the Outlander Season Five premiere. Coincidentally, he appeared to be carrying a bottle of his whisky. I spy him on the carpet. We hug. Normal length. (Gary Lewis, Colum in the show, wouldn’t have approved. He thinks a good hug can’t be rushed and should take at least an hour.)
‘I’d love to try your whisky,’ I say over the noise of fans and interviewers.
‘I’ll get you a bottle,’ he assures me.
I had an image of a bottle arriving perhaps at my hotel. Or maybe a couple of days later at my house. Me opening it excitedly, savouring several samplings, before calling him up to gush about its woody finish. That was February 2020. It is now nearly Christmas. Perhaps it’s been held up in the post?
[Sam: I actually gave a bottle to every cast member staying at the cast hotel. Graham was holed up in some LA mansion and likely wouldn’t give me his address for fear Lacroix and I might turn up, unannounced.]
I was finally able to sample the nectar at a dinner party in LA at the home of Karen Bailey, the Starz executive in charge of Outlander. It was a small sample (Lacroix was there, I think he’d been busy), but nevertheless it was really very good. I repressed the beginnings of a jealous twinge and concentrated on what I was tasting. Sam had spent a lot of time and energy perfecting this and it had paid off. I can’t rival Sam’s own description of the whisky but I will do my best:
It blends the throaty power of a Formula 1 racing car with the nimble meanderings of a Highland sheep, but this is no ordinary sheep. This sheep has drunk from the ambrosial springs of a misty glen, its slopes shrouded in tender dew. If wolves still roamed in Scotland you would feel their fangs as this whisky slid across your palette, like a hungry ballerina. I tasted heather, I tasted wild mountain thyme, I tasted tweed. As I let it glide down my throat and settle in my eager stomach I could have sworn I heard the sound of Bonnie Prince Charlie’s voice whispering in my ear, and the distant rumble of cannon fire. I wept.
Sam: Shut yer gob, old man. There’ll be no bottle of Sassenach for thee now.
SAM
Anyway, some time later we are behind the bar pulling pints for the landlord and his family, battered. And that’s when she enters, dressed in a T-shirt with ‘These Puppies Love Outlander’ on. We nickname her Delilah. But the real danger is the woman behind her – The Mother, known as Glenn (after Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction). Glenn is a woman of intimidating proportions. I’d seen her before in Prague. And Glasgow. And Edinburgh. And now she is here, offering her daughter.
‘I think you know why we are here, Jamie Fraser,’ she barks in a deep Glasgee burr. She prods her daughter who looks at me and flutters her fake eyelashes. Last time, I ended up hiding from Glenn in a stairwell in Prague as security wrestled her out of the hotel.
Graham is still pulling pints and talking bollocks as I sidle off to the gents and make a break for it to the car park. I am dazzled by blazing sunlight at 10.30 in the morning. I look at the camper, take out the keys from my pocket but there’s no way I can drive. Fuck.
Michelle is behind me. She has anticipated our incapacity and tells us to get into the back of the camper. ‘John will drive,’ she says. I tell her we need to get away – there are super fans on site and they mean to have me illegally, like Captain Jack Randall.
Michelle understands. She goes into the pub and returns with Graham who, like me, is blinded by the sun like a balding Icarus. He can’t see and is running in the wrong direction. Michelle pulls at his olive-green desert shirt and redirects him to the safety of the camper. Michelle goes back for Richard, who rushes to the vehicle as if through a battlefield of invisible bullets. Richard jumps in. ‘You’re going on ahead to the illicit still,’ says Michelle. John, now in the driver’s seat, starts the engine. Glenn and Delilah rush out of the pub as we disappear in a cloud of dust. That was close. Too close.
Without getting into too much detail, most Outlander fans are lovely and very normal but there are one or two who believe I am actually Jamie Fraser and that they are my true love or that I should be married to Claire (Caitriona Balfe). I know Graham would give a kidney to have this kind of attention but sometimes it’s a bit much. He claims to have been mobbed by super fans after the Tartan Parade in New York 2015, but that’s all in his mind!
As we head to our next destination, slumped on sofas in the back of the camper, we see a man walking alon
g the road, the image of Lacroix. Is that Duncan? It can’t be. ‘Duncan said he was going hiking,’ says Graham. I honestly can’t imagine him or the Irishman getting to the end of the drive, let alone up a mountain. I pull out a flask and offer it to McTavish.
Graham: No, I can’t. I mustn’t. (Beat.) Oh, go on then.
He has a swig and I take one and we recall the night Duncan Lacroix fell through Graham’s plate glass table.
We were filming Season One of Outlander (2014) when we were summoned from Glasgow to Edinburgh by Lady McTavish. It was a Sunday before read-through day, and he had organised a whisky-tasting online so fans could participate via social media and basically get drunk alongside cast members.
Graham emailed me:
To: Sam Heughan
Hey mate
Went to a very good whisky shop for five Speyside recommendations:
Mortlach 21yr
Ben Riach 15yr
Ben Rinnes 15yr
Glenfarclas 105
Craigellachie 18yr
I am getting the Mortlach and Craigellachie. I’ve asked Maril to get the Ben Rinnes – perhaps you could grab the Glenfarclas? I will get Lacroix to get the other one.
Or perhaps I could get them all here and you could sort me out then?
See you at 7pm at the restaurant tomorrow!
G
Most of us had been working every day, still on twelve-day fortnights. Tired but happy, we had wrapped a block (two episodes shot together) and the next morning would start a new double-episode shoot, complete with a new director and director of photography. Bundled into several black cabs from Glasgow, the cast and a couple of producers arrived at Graham’s chosen restaurant: a Japanese sushi bar. We eagerly got involved in the saké and Sapporo beer chasers. Duncan led the charge and by the time we made it back to Graham’s palace, we were all steaming.
His Majesty was residing in a large apartment in Edinburgh, next to the castle (though they didn’t seem to realise he was there, as there was no flag flying from the battlements). Carrying a Glenfarclas 105, a fire-monster of a bottle, robust, like a Highland warrior’s kick to the face, we rang the doorbell of the Monarch’s residence. It all started rather socially but by the end of five or six drams we were frazzled. I recall towards the end finding myself upside down, my feet against the ornate palace walls, staring at the ceiling. Tobias was tweaking someone’s nipples (maybe mine?). [Graham: Definitely yours.] Duncan and Caitriona were in a pile on the sofa.
GRAHAM’S DIARY ENTRY
Great party with Tobias, Sam, Cait, Grant, Duncan, Maril and Matt. Lovely evening. Grant, me and Duncan finished up at 3am (I don’t even remember Grant being there!). Duncan collapsed through my table smashing glasses and plates. I had to carry him to bed.
GRAHAM
I blame the saké. We drank it like water. It is worth noting Caitriona’s prodigious capacity for booze. By the time we got to my flat, my kids were asleep and my (then) wife joined us for a couple before wisely retreating to bed. We were trying (and failing) to speak lucidly about the various flavours in the different whiskies on camera. Matt Roberts valiantly tried to post about what we were doing. He might as well have just written ‘Getting pished. #hammered #boozehounds #renalfailure #Icannotspeakcoherentlymylipsarenumb’
I was somewhat shocked to see that of the five bottles only two had any whisky left at the end of the night. I think Sam took one, leaving the other. Duncan took care of that. After he fell through my glass coffee table (and I think had a fight with the soundman?) I carried him to bed. I managed to get his shoes off and left him snoring like a billy goat.
I set my alarm.
Four hours later I got Duncan up. The car was outside to take him to the set. The driver thought he was joking around as he staggered towards the vehicle. He wasn’t. I retired to my soft king-sized bed and enjoyed a day off. I had carefully organised the evening to coincide with my free time.
SAM
The next morning I found myself strapped in and being driven by Cait’s driver to work. Cait was upside down in the back, her feet the wrong way up. She had slept in and was still blind drunk as we raced to the studio for the read-through. I was chugging water and couldn’t see straight as I listened to her laughter and giggles coming from the back seat. We fell into the studio and found our seats.
I wasn’t sure if Caitriona could speak. She glazed over and her head began to fall forward. As the stage directions were being read out I gave her a nudge. Maybe because I was watching out for her, I didn’t notice my hangover as much, but I was sweating hard and clinging onto each word hoping they’d reveal some meaning. Constructing a sentence or following the story was beyond my grasp, we were definitely still ‘aff our heids’ drunk.
Grant, normally the jolly and pun-cracking Rupert in the show, was pale and quiet, gripped by a panic attack and ready to walk out. Duncan, to my left, his eyebrows even darker and more furrowed than I had ever seen before, growled, then spat his lines out. Was it Gaelic? I thought. I couldn’t understand a word. Maybe he was making it up.
Moments earlier, he had walked into the main producer David Brown’s office and thrown a copy of Dragonfly in Amber at him, exclaiming: ‘I suppose you expect me to read this!’ I could tell the director and producers were angry and beginning to suspect we were not at our best. Or was it my paranoia? Were they looking at me? What if I started drooling or throwing up on Cait?
And who was to blame?
One man. Nay, king. The only member of cast not required and still comfortably sleeping off his hangover, wrapped up in his king-size bed, snoring delightfully in Edinburgh.
***
Graham: Oh look, we’re stopping. Is there more drinking?
Sam: Come on you, lightweight.
I had found a hidden spot in the heather, next to a tributary of the River Coe, as the location for our chat about illicit stills and whisky-making. I knew a thing or two about illicit liquor as my character, Jamie, becomes a wine importer in Season Two and distils his own whisky in Season Five.
My trusty grey companion stumbles behind me like a pigeon-toed alpaca as we make our way down a narrow track to the water’s edge. Richard follows too, carrying the beautiful copper still I had found online and constructed myself, ignoring all the instructions. My proud wee still, albeit slightly rickety, was a beauty, its copper shining bright. For the rest of our epic Scottish quest it took pride of place perched on the camper van toilet seat, the safest place for it as we drove along those windy Highland roads.
What if we could distil whisky in our camper van? I imagine driving through the Highlands in our trusty wagon, creating some real road whisky in the back. Completely illegal. I wonder what the police would say and immediately think better of the idea.
Graham, still in the booze bubble, thinks it’s a tremendous idea. ‘It will be like Scottish Breaking Bad. Cooking it in the back, selling it out the front!’
Eventually, the rest of the film crew arrive having finally thrown the voracious fans Glenn and Delilah off their tail. Richard sets up the portable still and guides us through the process of making illicit whisky. Ever since the first taxes on whisky were introduced in 1644, illicit whisky distilling and smuggling became normal in Scotland for nearly 200 years. ‘We’re in a remote location away from the prying eyes, close to running water,’ he says conspiratorially. ‘The bootleggers were quite sophisticated because there was so much illegal distilling going on. They were playing a cat-and-mouse game with the excise men or “gaugers” (tax collectors). Some would set up a complete network of pipes from a woodland still to a nearby cottage so the smoke would come out of the cottage and the gaugers wouldn’t know what was going on.’
They created their own portable stills, which were easy to dismantle in minutes, and had canny ways of hiding Scotch from the taxman, keeping it in caves, coffins or stashed in the church by members of the clergy. The clans and Jacobites united the people behind the smugglers and boot
leggers, turning them into heroes of ‘free trade’.
GRAHAM
It’s funny because Scotland’s much-loved poet Robert ‘Rabbie’ Burns (1759–96) worked as a gauger (tax collector) in his later years to pay the bills. Burns said, ‘Taxes were seen by Scots as oppressive and resistance to them positively patriotic.’ And I’m guessing they were especially loathsome given they were indirectly imposed by the English. The Act of Union in 1707 created levies on some goods seven times higher than in England and this ‘VAT’ remained high throughout the eighteenth century to line the crown’s coffers to fund dust-ups with the French.
In 1786 Burns wrote ‘The Author’s Earnest Cry and Prayer’ in which he coined the immortal line: ‘Freedom an’ whisky gang thegither’, which was used as an episode title in Outlander (Season Three, Episode Five). Addressed to The Right Honourable and Honourable Scotch Representatives in the House of Commons, it is essentially a plea for tax reduction.
Although he didn’t like his occupation he must have been good at it because he was promoted to the Dumfries Port Division in 1792. And as Richard explains, Burns would have been busy. ‘Before the Excise Act of 1823, which halved the amount of duty on whisky, there were records of over 14,000 illicit stills confiscated in Scotland.’
That’s a still for every other Highlander!
And, everyone was drinking it. Apparently, even King George IV requested an illegal dram of Glenlivet on a state visit to Scotland in 1822.
SAM
I was brought up near Rabbie Burns’ hometown in Dumfries and it was at the ‘Burns Centre’ (an art house cinema and not a hospital!) that I first went to the cinema. Turner and Hooch with Tom Hanks was the first proper movie I remember. The local cinema in Castle Douglas had a cracked screen and would pause the movie halfway through for an intermission to sell melted ice cream and penny sweets. I don’t remember them playing a single McTavish film! [Sam: Right, that’s enough talk of swally, we’ve got some fighting to do . . .] [Graham: I need a lie down.] [Sam: That can be arranged.]