FRIDAY NIGHT BOYS: Raw Spirit

Wednesday, 19 May 2010

Raw Spirit - Iain Banks

Raw Spirit: In search of the Perfect Dram
by Iain Banks

The view from under the table
By Cal McCrystal

Sunday, 28 December 2003

The jacket of this book credits its author with "staggering feats of imagination". This is more than publisher's hyperbole, it is true as a consequence of Iain Banks's habit of drinking "two units of whisky" daily - not excessive by modern standards, yet quite sufficient for stirring the imagination into a staggering feat.

Now, some of us may associate whisky consumption with staggering feet, but in my experience drunken dram men are rarer than gin, rum and vodka inebriates, except perhaps in Scotland, the subject of the Banks pilgrimage, and in Ireland, my own country, where an added vowel - "whiskey" - stretches the gullet agreeably. In both places, and elsewhere, whisk(e)y has been regarded benignly; as an inspiration to mankind ("Freedom and whisky gang thegither" - Robert Burns) and as a charm against the toothache. It also keeps out the cold, promotes bonhomie, allows the digestion of haggis and deep-fried Mars bars, and guards against nihilism. That it may occasionally induce collisions of dicta cannot be gainsaid, especially when, in Mr Banks's country, devotees are moved to follow inhalations of the amber fluid with exhalations of Harry Lauder in roughly balanced quantities.

The imagination is an integral part of all our experience, being the necessary condition of all perception. It is present in the simplest apprehension of the world. To exercise it is the duty of every journalist and every novel writer, and it is incumbent on them to enhance the process by partaking of a dram or two. To an unstinted degree, enhancement may be effected by a pub-crawl, being, as the author puts it, "a relatively expensive but very pleasant way of getting out of your head". In Mr Banks's case it is achieved by a higher class of journey: a distillery-crawl.

His book concerns single-malt whisky, the art of making it, the places where it is made, the business of selling and promoting it, "the pleasure to be had in consuming it", and about many other things, including Scottish geography, diet, mood, temperament and perceptions. It is a witty guide to "the land I love", narrated in a folksy mix of H V Morton, Billy Connolly (sans expletives), foodie, elocutionist (pronunciation guide supplied), and imagery of the staggering variety. Much of his search for the perfect dram is conducted in his beloved old Land Rover which rattles "like a bucket of bolts in a tumble dryer".

Even though there are occasions when, for example, he finds himself lying under a table with a drink balanced on his chest, his feats never seem to stagger his mind as he guides us from the barley to the bottle, from the malting to the mouth. "You can't use everything that comes out of a still; the first stuff to come out is overly strong and contains too many chemicals you wouldn't want to swallow, while the last bit is sort of all weak and pathetic and gets sent back to the wash still to try again." The author's personality and style - an element assumed by us to be on the whole the least calculable mode of excellence - are charming and lively throughout. His easy-going, revealing, non-judgemental approach to the subject is a far cry from, say, George Crabbe's (Sassenach) lament: "See Inebriety, her wand she waves, / And lo! her pale and lo! her purple slaves."

There remains, of course, resistance to whisky in some Scottish quarters where a "ball" of malt is as efficacious as the devil's cannonball. This hasn't changed much down the centuries. Hugh Miller, in 1879, describes (in Schools and Schoolmasters: The Story of My Education) a typical, and, on his part, censorious visit to a Scottish "dram house... into which the light of day never penetrated, and in which the gas was burning dimly in a close sluggish atmosphere, rendered more stifling by tobacco-smoke, and a strong smell of ardent spirits". Here, the liquor soon took hold of "the middle-aged workmen, whose constitutions seemed undermined by a previous course of dissipation and debauchery. The conversation became very loud, very involved, and, though highly seasoned with emphatic oaths, very insipid." In other words, no imaginative feats.

Mr Banks's sampling of the ardent spirits, on the other hand, invites no such reproaches. He begins with a conversation with a friend who, after hearing with disbelief that he's going to be paid to be driven around Scotland researching, that is drinking, the finest malt whisky, volunteers: "D'you need a hand?"

He didn't, although he almost lost one, when, after an ardent feat of research, and on his way to Glenfinnan, his vehicle went "skittery" and hit the kerb. "There was a loud bang indeed and the airbag detonated." The whisky pilgrim sustained "this terrific whack on the head" when the vehicle rolled over and skidded along the road on its roof, which caved in. Hanging upside down from a seat belt with a sore head can sometimes be as intense as a hangover, but the bruised Mr Banks pressed on, undeterred, on his liquorific quest, becoming a total expert on the subtle differences between smoky malts and delighting us with his expertise. It is a more joyful, anticipatory journey than Miller's was.

Modern tolerance for leglessness aside, it makes me wonder how the Scots achieved the miracle of making hearty whisky-drinking so respectable north of the border. I think I have it. The adjective "wee" confers to potentially troublesome objects a degree of insignificance that reduces the idea of risk, repercussions and inordinate thirst. "Will you take a wee dram?" diminishes the actual potency of Scotch whisky, just as "I'll have a wee half 'un" (half-glass, much larger than a dram, nip or tot) does for the favourite tipple of the Scotch-Irish in Ulster. Thus Iain Banks sets out along "great wee roads" to lots of wee distilleries to get a wee bellyful and give us a wee laugh in his lovely wee book, which we must applaud with bending elbows and malted breath, since it doesn't do us a wee bit of harm.