Against the grain for malt-flavoured odyssey on orange beast

Mainstream, #12.99 (pp 188)

MALT whisky drinkers, if you believe the books they write, sink the

soft stuff for its flavour. Glen This, they'll tell you, tastes like

bananas; Glen That like toffee; Glen The Other like black pudding.

Seldom does whisky taste like whisky to connoisseurs -- which explains

why there are so many quasi-mystical studies of the subject. Whisky,

according to the likes of Neil Gunn, is not what it seems. Drink it and

you will become spiritual, not smashed.

Tom Morton, no connoiss-

eur, has produced what he proudly calls ''a sort of idiot's guide'' to

malt whisky. Raised in a teetotalitarian household, his parents members

of the strictly sober Christian Brethren, Morton became a full-time

evangelist at the age of 25. Three years later he got down to the

serious business of boozing: switching from preaching to sex, drink, and

rock 'n' roll; drinking for alcoholic collapse, not spiritual support.

Then, after reading John Fowles's Daniel Martin, whose hero drinks only

Laphroaig, he tried Laphroaig and discovered malt whisky was superior to

blended whisky.

Convinced that by doing so he could claim his drinks as legitimate

expenses against tax he decided to write a book about malt whisky. To

write his book he bought a bike. A motorbike. An old orange East German

motorbike with sidecar. Well pleased with his ''orange beast'' he

carefully planned a spiritual odyssey. He would set out from his

Cromarty home, visit Britain's most northerly mainland distillery in

Pulteney, see the whisky sights of Speyside, cross to the west coast and

Skye, head south to Campbeltown. His best-laid plans went aft agley

thanks to the behaviour of the orange beast.

Much of Morton's book describes his love-hate relationship with the

beast. It, more than the author or any of the whisky drinkers he meets,

is the central character in a quest for the secret of Scotch spirit. It

is enough to make a grown man wilt, as Morton appreciates after sampling

a dram of Glenfarclas: ''Outside, it's still teeming down, and the bike

won't start. After half an hour of sobbing effort, it finally stutters

to life, and I decide I've had enough of whisky, enough of motorbikes,

and most definitely enough of Speyside.'' Gunn, the whisky connoisseur,

went Off in a Boat and enjoyed it. Morton went off on a motorbike and

endured it.

An experienced journalist, Morton is good at anecdotes involving the

beast. Good at anecdotes of adversity. Visiting Oban (''Words cannot

express how horrible Oban is'') he was caught short. Unable to find a

Gents' in working order he rushed into a Ladies', relieved there were no

ladies about. One toilet pan was smashed, the other lacked a toilet

seat: ''It would have to do. I tore off my trousers, and, muscles

screaming, avoided disaster by millimetres. I looked up. It was only

then I realised I'd left the outside door open, and could clearly see

the swarming humanity of Oban passing by outside. None of them appeared

to be noticing me.'' Doubtless they'd seen it all before.

If the anecdotes are amusing, the atmospheric touches are

unconvincing, relying on television trivia rather than close

observation. Portree is, so Morton says, reminiscent of ''The Village

featured in Patrick McGoohan's Prisoner TV series''. An obstreperous

drunk is ''a Rab C. Nesbitt only smaller, more intimidating, less

predictably cuddly''. An Armadale inn ''looks like something out of Twin

Peaks''. Clynelish recalls Jeremy Paxman's favourite drink and Morton

asks: ''Who cares what Jeremy Paxman's favourite drink is?'' Morton

cares. He is intoxicated by television culture.

As for whisky, Morton can take it or leave it though, on or off

balance, he prefers to take it. We already know he loves Laphroaig. He

also loves Highland Park, thinks Dalmore ''a delight''. Some equally

fine malts, however, he finds bland or boring. Glenmorangie is ''a wee

bit bland'', Glenfiddich ''a waste of time, really''. A matter,

inevitably, of opinion. Despite his aversion to particular malts, Morton

is able to generalise: ''Malts are going to be the cult of the early

twenty-first century, from Alaska to Australia.'' So there's life left

in whisky-soaked Scotland.

But is this life worth living? It depends, says the old joke, on the

liver. Morton acknowledges the damage done to Scotland by alcoholism.

Alcohol shrinks the brain, enlarges the liver, increases the risk of

stomach cancer, weakens the will of a people. Yet -- this familiar

refrain is as haunting as a hangover -- health holds for the drinker who

goes against the grain and goes only for gold. Malt whisky-drinking ''is

not about drunkenness-seeking but about taste and history and geography

and, yes, the wee jag of the spirit beneath.'' Grain bad, malt good:

such is the dangerously complacent credo of those who observe the

religious rites of the soft stuff. Morton abandoned an evangelical

career but is still a man with a questionable mission. His enjoyable new

testament of a toper shows how he mastered a motorbike but remained

under the unsettling influence of a pseudo-spiritual myth.