Perfect Poise, Perfect Life
Bring your body into balance and revolutionise your life
By Noel Kingsley
Publisher Hodder Mobius
AVAILABLE HERE
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Life changing inspiration
Snow clouds over Shetland
Don't you just love exciting adventures? And isn't it great to see people following their heart?
I've just been reading about a woman business executive who has uprooted and changed her whole life for a dream.
Caroline Whitfield of London worked as a consultant to huge international companies. Being four months pregnant with her third child she decided to escape from London to the Shetland Islands for a week's break with her two daughters and barrister husband.
They had gone there with the half hearted idea of buying a holiday home. While visiting potential houses with a surveyor she asked where the local whisky distillery was, thinking it might be an interesting place to visit. She was astonished to hear that there wasn't one. Having done work for a drinks company she knew that the pure spring waters and peaty bogs of the Shetlands made it the ideal location for malting whisky. She almost instantly had the idea that she could open a distillery of her own here in Shetland. And so Blackwood Distillers was born four years ago.
They have already won international awards for their own-label gin and vodka and plan to start producing whisky in the next three years. She has gathered around her a number of highly experienced people in specialised fields including quality and master tasting, the world leading distillery designer, a financial expert on fast growing businesses and the man who built the first modern distillery in Wales in 1999.
Burn of Lunklet
The location sounds like a dream. The Shetlands are a group of 110 islands far north of Scotland and only 180 miles from Bergen, Norway. As the latitude is almost exactly 60 degrees North it gets 15 hours of sunshine in summer and only 5 in winter. The air is clear and moist so whisky evaporation normally 2% will be greatly reduced. The purest water flows straight from sandstone springs into a burn (stream) that meanders over peat and then flows down to the cove, unaffected by man from source to sea. The slowest forming peat on earth grows on Shetland and has been forming here since at least the Bronze Age, some 4000 years ago. Due to the extreme northern latitude and cool weather, Shetland peat grows incredibly slowly and includes local flora unique to the area. This leads to a rich aromatic peat ideally suited to help create a truly outstanding malt, in full or lightly peated styles. The prospects for the first whisky distillery on Shetland are fantastic.
They have had first indications of a truly great malt. Samples have been made using local peat, water and Scottish barley, replicating the climactic conditions. The results suggest the whisky, both peated and unpeated, will have its own unique character distinctive to Shetland itself. Closest references are lightly peated Islay whisky or other outstanding Northern Malts such as Highland Park on Orkney. A local resident on tasting the peated sample exclaimed "I don 't know how you have done this but this IS the smell of Shetland - it is exactly as I remember my grandfather's croft with the burning peat in the fire and sweet mutton drying nearby - wonderful." They expect different wood finishes will bring out various flavour profiles in both the peated and unpeated malts and indeed show the potential to be accessible in taste as outstanding, easy-drinking whiskies.
Caroline is a true adventurer. She says herself, if she hadn't visited the Shetlands in 2002, who knows where she would be now. In a moment of true inspiration, she discovered a new direction that has changed her life completely. Good for her! And Good luck to her team.
I don't drink whisky very often although I love the taste. I certainly will be tasting her new malt when it eventually produced.
I just so love success and adventure stories. If you've got one you'd like to share with me, please get in touch!
;-)
Sources: Daily Express & Blackwood Distillery