Distilleries of the United Kingdom - Part 1 (Oban, Talisker)

Every year since I was 8 years old, my dad and I have taken a fishing trip somewhere within Australia. Over time, the distances covered gradually became longer, and the fishing time less and less (we're both car nuts and love the open road, so neither of us were too upset at the shift). We eventually stopped calling them "fishing trips", and recognised them for what they were - road trips (there was a time when it wasn't unheard of for us to cover 1,000km each day).

In 2009, after building up a hefty balance of Frequent Flyer points from work travel, I decided we needed to step it up a notch and take the road trip overseas. Where to? Germany of course (conveniently timed with not only that car-nut mecca known as the Frankfurt Motor Show, but also Oktoberfest). Nürburgring, Autobahns (we hired a brand new E92 M3 for a week, because it was ridiculously cheap), bierhauses...it was going to be the ultimate boys' trip.

Being a bit of a Frequent Flyer geek though, I didn't want to waste 128,000pts each on a simple trip to Germany, when for 140,000pts Qantas offer a fantastic round-the-world airfare. And so it was that we were off on a trip which took in China, Dubai, England, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Austria, Liechtenstein, Spain, Estonia, USA and yes, SCOTLAND!

(..and here you were thinking this post has nothing to do with whisky ;)).

At the time admittedly I was still finding my whisky feet, but I knew what I liked (which at the time, remember this was 2009, was Speyside and "none of that iodine crap") and so we set off to visit as many distilleries as we could. We didn't tour or taste at all of them (and some that we did didn't allow photography), and I certainly didn't take any notes expecting to write a blog post 4 years later....so these posts will mainly consist of photos, for nothing other than viewing pleasure (and to make me get cracking on planning a return in 2014 2015). 

First up - Oban and Talisker. Enjoy!

 

 

Cheers,
 - Martin.