The Smallest Distillery in Scotland
Donaghy found me behind the whisky stills and suffered my story: faith, boiled down to a mash of schoolboy memory - the creaking pew, shot of hymn, blood trickles down the gaunt white lolling face, that feeling someone famous just left the room. Highland monks, he said, distilled the wort they christened uisge beatha to treat colic and the mumps. If the spirit failed, they would ‘commend you to the light, where all reliable accounts conclude’. His words, repeated, flush my throat. There was an ending - a refined measure of proof conjured by an angel’s share just before he evaporated through the mould-black roof.