A dram fine time in Islay
Fifteen years since its publication, Iain Banks’s whisky book, Raw Spirit ,is being re-released, with an introduction by Ian Rankin. Below, Rankin sums up the charm of the book, and Banks reflects on the fauna of Islay, and its sometimes problematic interactions with the island’s distilleries
Drinking whisky is never about just drinking whisky,” Iain Banks states near the start of this adventure. I could add that an Iain Banks book about whisky was never going to be just about the drink itself. Raw Spirit is as much a book about friendship and kinship and the allure of the open road (especially to a petrolhead). There are anecdotes, memories rekindled, tall tales told, games played, jokes made and routes and locales (as well as locals) lovingly detailed. Much like a fine malt, this is a book to savour.
Ian Rankin
Islay is a fertile, fecund place which is surrounded by – almost infested with – wildlife. There are orcas, dolphins and seals off the coasts, feeding on unseen numbers of fish and crustacea. There are three species of deer scattered through the forests and hills, each of them apparently pursuing lives largely dedicated to jumping out in front of cars at night with the absolute minimum of warning, in – one has to assume – some misplaced spirit of sportingness. There are multitudinous birds of prey, including those songbirdsnaffling buzzards, clouds and carpets of wintering geese – just passing through to refuel from and leave fertiliser on the fields (again, at least three different species) – pheasants (plump, brightly coloured birds prone to wandering around fields, hedgerows, verges and any intriguingly tarmacked surface with a distracted air, looking vaguely lost, as though they have the sneaking suspicion they should be somewhere else... basically road kill waiting to happen), otters (boo! hiss! Bad otters!), hares – lots of hares, usually seen bounding away on back legs that somehow look too long for them, as though they’ve borrowed them from a young gazelle – rabbits, plus a whole slew of smaller creatures that are generally only seen in squashed form, decorating the lumpy, undulating, peat-floated road surfaces of Islay with brown-red splodges of fur, meat and bone. These are, especially when fresh – and indeed preferably twitching – of enormous and consuming interest to the noisy flocks of crows which would otherwise be happily employed looking for sheep recently fallen on their backs so they can peck out their eyes or get stuck into their juicily vulnerable nether regions.
There’s so much wildlife on Islay it even interferes with the whiskymaking. Worst culprits are the geese, who’ve been known to devour entire fields of barley destined for the honour of becoming whisky, but this hasn’t stopped fish and mammals from trying to get in on the act as well; the day we went to Bunnahabhain they were taking apart one of the cooling columns in the still room because a trout had got into the system from the sea, wedged in the heat exchanger and stopped the whole operation in its tracks. It was even – and evenly – cooked, due to the proximity of the place it got stuck to the hot bits of the pipe work, though whether anybody actually ate it afterwards is not recorded. They were discussing putting a better baffle plate or something on the inlet pipe when we left and talking about how that otter managed to get itself wedged in the same place last year. n
Raw Spirit: In Search of the Perfect Dram by Iain Banks, with an introduction by Ian Rankin, is published by Century, priced £12.99