“I really enjoy my whisky,” Jamie Muir says.
He ought to.
Raised on Jura, schooled on Islay and now Distillery Manager at Tomatin Distillery near Inverness, you’d say something had gone horribly wrong if he didn’t enjoy his whisky.
Drill deeper and he admits: “I think a lot of what I enjoy about whisky is situational. Drinking it in a warehouse, yep, there’s something incredibly special about that. Drinking it with someone who really enjoys it, I get probably more gratification from that now as well.
“Again in the middle of the winter here at Tomatin, when it’s snowing, you’ve got the fire on, nothing nicer than just sitting there with your feet up with a dram.”
But ultimately, Jamie says, “It’s the company I’m with at the time that enamours me to want to have a drink.”
“My memories of whisky,” he continues, “are, you know, being out flyfishing with my dad, my brothers, out on the hill. At the end of the day, you open a bottle. Whatever it was. Predominantly it would have been Jura. But more often, Famous Grouse, Whyte and MacKay. You would crack open the cap, punch it up, throw it away, and you would pass the bottle around.
“I probably didn’t enjoy the whisky itself, but I enjoyed being part of the camaraderie of it. You were every bit as important - whether you’re a young boy or not, or a young lad or not - you still got that bottle passed to you. And it felt like a bit of a rite of way.”
Fast forward 20 or 30 years, and Jamie now has access to a lot of whisky.
Tomatin Distillery was established in 1897 and primarily produced whisky that went into blends. By the 1980s, Tomatin was the biggest distillery in the world - “for a very small period of time,” Jamie’s quick to concede - producing 12 million litres a year.
Today, Jamie adds, “We’re probably a five, six million litre distillery. We don’t hit that capacity.”
“I guess what attracted me to Tomatin in the first place was the size of it, the scale of it. It’s a, I don’t like using the word, a sleeping giant. But it is a big site from the past. And you see a lot of the history of it still here.”
And a lot of that history has left a legacy maturing in casks, in the warehouses on site.
“We have a lot of old stock. And that is a byproduct of a lot of bulk production back in the eighties. Our oldest cask right now is about to turn sixty years old next year… But what’s more impressive is the depth of the forty, fifty year olds.”
And that brings Jamie to 1977. “1977 is the dream year for a lot of people in this distillery,” he says. And he includes himself. It’s the best whisky, he says, he’s ever tasted: “The tropical notes are incredible for the edge of it. It's so vibrant, it's so unique. The depth of it's fantastic. The balance to it's incredible.”
“Yep,” he concludes, “the Tomatin 1977's pretty, pretty special to me. And every time I try it, it's usually a Warehouse Six. In the most beautiful surrounding, it's usually cold.
“There's just something amazing about it. Every time I smell it, I know exactly what I'm smelling. I know that smell distinctly well. And it just brings me back every time to the same you know, that first time I smelled it.”
And the price tag? “Probably near ten grand,” he says off the top of his head.
Join John as he chats to Jamie about his inevitable career path, his love of whisky and his new Tomatin home, and discover how:
➡️Tomatin’s wood management keeps its old stock fresh;
➡️the core Tomatin line of 10- 12- & 18-year-old whiskies are complimented by its Cù Bòcan “experimental” range;
➡️Tomatin partners with its Japanese owners;
➡️“over-aging” could become more common.
Slàinte!
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Socials: @C2GWhisky | @JohnRossBeattie
Creator & producer: David Holmes
Art work & design: Jess Robertson
Music: Water of Life (Never Going Home)
Vocals: Andrea Cunningham
Guitars: John Beattie
Bass: Alasdair Vann
Drums: Alan Hamilton
Bagpipes: Calum McColl
Accordion: Gary Innes
Music & Lyrics: Andrea Cunningham & John Beattie
Recorded & mixed by Murray Collier at La Chunky Studios, Glasgow, Scotland
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