Today Murray Douglas, poet, author, politician and whisky connoisseur par excellence passed at the age of seventy-five. He stoked within me a lifelong love of nature, the cosmos, and especially Single Malt Whisky. I will never forget his impassioned description of the nose of Cragganmore, from 1978's "Great Whiskies the World Over":
I had experienced this aroma once before. In the shadow of the Rhodope Mountains, in Bulgaria, I chanced upon the most splendid array of rose cultivars my olfactory senses had ever experienced. The air was redolent with its rich aroma, freshly tilled soil, and beams of Slavonian Oak holding the ancient fences upright, imparting its musky Croat characteristics. Nearby a villager dropped a flask of his slivovitsa, and as it pooled, I knelt down and watched it mix with the rich Byzantine earth. Basil Bulgaroctonus had spilled the blood of ten thousand Bulgar warriors on this very spot. Somehow, bubbling from the rich loam, that memory still survived, as I thought I could detect just a hint of iron in the breeze. But it was there.
He will be sorely missed.
LieQuest 2013