Dornoch Castle: A Whisky Tasting at One of the World’s Most Popular Hotel Bars

Combined with malted barley and yeast, it becomes aquae vitae. The ‘water of life’ or Scotch whisky — and the brothers Simon and Phil Thompson have amassed a tribute to this amber elixir in the form of a bar at the Dornoch Castle hotel illuminated by 400-plus bottles of spirit. Rare antiques that would go for double the price per dram (whisky vocab for ‘drink’) in the cosmopolitan bars of London or New Your City lure drinkers from all corners of the globe. Even a novice can appreciate this collection even if only for the labels covered in old red cursive script, some peeling off after decades of changing hands.

What is it about Scotch whisky that commands such devotion like a preacher commanding the soul of their flock? Most casual drinkers associate it with a bad night in college, the precursor to an evening — and an early morning — of regrettable decisions.

To better understand, I took my novice palate and scarce knowledge to Dornoch Castle to sign up for their whisky tasting so that I might learn the differences from a smokey Islay and a sweet Speyside, or indeed, what they are in the first place. But before I got to that, I had to learn how to properly taste the drink for maximum appreciation using one of the world’s top-rated whisky bars (rated by drinkers themselves) as my textbook.

I settled into the converted cellar, a former prison turned private event space with white walls that extend to the low, curved ceiling. But General Manager, Matthew Logie, has hosted tastings throughout the 15th-century property. Perhaps his greatest success story took place on the second floor where sofas, armchairs, and a modestly-sized bookshelf surround the fireplace. A group of American women signed up while their husbands played golf at the nearby Royal Dornoch golf course, never having taken the drink seriously before. By the end, they were all happy — and tipsy — converts.

Growing up, Matt only knew of whisky through adverts on television. “I had no idea the whisky world was so huge,” he admitted. Perhaps that’s because, as Rachel McCormack put it in Chasing the Dram, “whisky in Scotland is like heat in Australia — it’s everywhere.” It wasn’t until he hit his late teens that he started working in the drinks industry and received a proper education on the topic. But he hardly considered himself an omnipotent source on the matter. “Whisky is a thing that you learn all the time and you can never know everything.”

To start off the tasting, Matt pulled out a bottle of I Love Dornoch, a blend of Islay peaties from Elixir Distillers in London. Islay, as a novice quickly learns, is an island off the coast of western Scotland and an official whisky region (Speyside, Highlands, Lowlands, Campbeltown are the others) where peat bogs are burned to dry the malted barley, giving the whisky a distinctive smoky flavor and aroma.

Like wine or any other passion, there will be those who tell you how to do whisky right. “Tears of whisky knowledge” as Phil put it while walking me through their crowd-funded distillery. That is, Scottish people who assume they know about whisky because they’re Scottish.

First things first, we studied the bottle. You get the style and the percentage of alcohol (45 in this case), which is important because it clues you in on how much water you’ll be adding later on. Before drinking, “we sniff the whisky in its pure form” and then you take your drink.

Matt emphasized that “we don’t slurp the whisky right back.” Andy Chu, a young Hongkonger bartender and whisky connoisseur, explained earlier in the day that this collegiate drinking etiquette shocks your brain and blinds your tastebuds. That’s why almost anyone who says they don’t like whisky says so because of a bad night at the bar in their early 20s. Truth be told, there’s likely a whisky out there for you.

Returning to the freshly-poured dram of I Love Dornoch, we got a campfire aroma, the kind that sticks to your clothes and makes a camp counsellor sing “Kumbaya.” Following Matt’s lead, I took a sip, and held it on my palate for a moment.

“Yeah, that’s really good,” I responded, knowing that this style can be polarizing.

“It’s a little bit like someone has their favourite wine,” Matt said. “People have their favourite beer, some people have their favourite bourbon, some people love the peatiness of an Islay whisky.”

Finished with our dram of I Love Dornoch, Matt pulled up the second of three bottles. “We’re going all the way up to Thurso in Cape Ness,” he said as I took a look at the black and white sketch of a wolf on the label. This was Wolfburn Distillery, which initially closed back in 1877 before reopening in 2013.

Here, Matt addressed one of the many misconceptions about whisky, that it needs to age for at least five or eight years to be any good. Wolfburn is tangible proof that a young whisky can be pretty damn tasty — and popular. We were drinking from a cask that was bought and bottled exclusively to celebrate 18 years of the Dornoch Castle Hotel and whisky bar.

This one clocked in at 51.7 percent alcohol. “What you should be getting is a slight touch of sweetness, and obviously, you smell the wood as well,” said Matt, reminding me of a question that had been burning my notepad: Where does the flavour come from? The wood or the distilling? The amazing thing is that even scientists can’t say definitively, so any answer you get is conjecture from either professional experience or whatever floats your romantic sensibilities. Is it the skilled technique of men and women performing an art that can’t be emulated by assembly line robots, or is it nature flavouring the drink? The answer you’ll get at Dornoch Castle is a resounding “both.”

“You’ll get your initial spirit taste from the spirit run and that depends on how you distil your spirit,” Matt explained, noting that the Thompson Brothers are using an older method for their fledgeling whisky that aims to value quality over quantity. “The spirit yield will be lower, but they get a much purer, old style taste of spirit.”

Taking a nose and a sip of the Wolfburn, even my novice sensibilities can tell this is no Islay peaty. There’s a sweetness to it, almost like candy, with a hint of caramel. (Hey, ma! Look at me properly dissecting and appreciating my booze!)

The key to recognizing these aromas and flavours, said Matt, is by reflecting on what you’ve previously smelt or eaten. As you connect different whiskies to the various aromatic and tasting memories of your life, you build a library that connects across your palate and brain that allows you to spot these characteristics in your drink. More importantly, you better savour it. Indeed, there was a sweetness to that first dram of Wolfburn that reminded me just enough of the frosting from a childhood chain’s smiley-faced cookies that I could make a mental note. (Having bought a bottle to bring home, my palate has since detected the sweetness of an apple.)

Since the Wolfburn does have high alcohol content, we brought the water in to eliminate the burn and make some of the flavours more noticeable. Like blended whiskies, you’ll come across drinkers who swear against adding any water to their whisky and will make you feel bad for even thinking it. “Pride is a lot of it,” says Matt, noting most people drink their whisky like their father did. “My dad does nothing wrong and my grandfather did it like that before him, so this must be the right way of doing it!”

Once you get over that nonsensical hill, you realize adding drops of water changes the whisky, and for some drinkers, makes it more palatable and enjoyable. With the Wolfburn, the sweetness intensifies without being overbearing and that alcohol burn is all but gone.

Wrapping up the tasting, Matt placed a Highland Park aged 15 years from the Orkney Islands on the table. If you know anything about your whisky, this is some of the good stuff. The specific bottle we were drinking came from an oak sherry cask and was bottled by the Independent Whisky Bars of Scotland, which consists of just five bars. The whisky bar at Dornoch Castle Hotel is one of them.

I took a nose of the 58.1 percent proof dram and Matt encouraged me to give him my own notes.

“Something a little bit like caramel?” I hesitated.

“Exactly,” he confirmed. “You’re getting the sweetness from the sherry.”

Success.

The tasting completed, I sat with a dram of peaty Laphroaig 10 in the dimly-lit dining room shared with the bar and a roaring wood fire in front of me. I reflected on the tasting itself, the people I met over my three days at Dornoch Castle, and the prevailing question that had been on my mind throughout my travels. How connected is whisky to Scottish culture? How important is it?

“Massive,” “Huge,” “Absolutely vital” are some of the short answers I was given. Hotelier Colin Thompson (Phil’s father) expanded on his two cents, adding, “Everywhere you go in the world, first of all, you’ll meet a Scotsman, and secondly, you’ll find a bottle of malt in a bar somewhere.”

Most who will stay and drink at Dornoch Castle will be on a pilgrimage of sorts, traveling along the Scottish Malt Whisky Trail to visit nearby Highland distilleries like Glen Morangie, Balblair, and Ardmore. Thanks to their bar, winner of Whiskybase’s Scottish Whisky Bar of the year in 2014 and 2016, Dornoch Castle has become a defacto stop along the trail without a drop of the pretension that usually comes with such accolades.

Matt admitted without a flinch to having a dram of Johnnie Walker Red Label (a mass-produced blend) with a splash of coke when sitting at home in front of the fire. Phil fondly recalled his father taking his whisky with a couple of cubes of ice, which might make a pompous purveyor of whisky weep if he weren’t so worried about getting water in his drink.

“There’s not a right or wrong in the whisky world,” Matt reminded us. “A lot of people think there is, that you’ve got to drink whisky one way, you’ve got to add two drops of water, swirl it around anti-clockwise three times. It’s not the case. Whisky is to be enjoyed and there’s so many out there that there’s a whisky for everyone and there’s a way of drinking it and you just find the way that you enjoy it.”