She shook her head. “No, Will. I’ll bide here. There’s porridge in the kitchen for you, and then you’d best see if you can get to the beasts.”
With a last glance at his father’s flushed face, Will left the parlor. The kitchen was bitterly cold, in spite of the stove, and he shivered as he ate his breakfast. Then he wrapped up as well as he could and, taking the shovel they kept handy in the porch, ventured out the front door.
His boots sank into the powdery snow—a bad sign.
Once an ice crust formed over the top it would be easier walking, but for now he’d have to wade or shovel his way through the drifts to the barn and distillery buildings. Beyond the near field Carn More, the hill from which the distillery took its name, rose steeply, its rugged granite face softened by the white icing of snow.
As he watched, the sun rose, gilding the march of the Ladder Hills with a glistening rose as delicate as his mother’s best satin gown. The air was so still it felt charged with silence, as if the world were waiting for something to happen.
Will held his breath for a moment, listening, then picked up the spade and dug in.
It took him almost an hour to reach the barn. Wiping a hand across his sweating brow, he stretched his shoulders and contemplated the drifts that reached all the way to the eaves. He could hear the animals moving restively about inside, and he felt a moment’s stab of despair at the enormity of the task before him.
Not that it was the first time Carnmore had been snowed in, but always before, he and his father had managed together. He pushed away the unbidden thought of his wee sister, Charlotte, taken from them by a fever at less than a year old. But his father was older and stronger—surely he would be all right.
Will began digging with renewed energy, trying to blot out his fear with the thunk of the spade. Once he’d cleared the snow from the barn door, he was glad to slip into the relative warmth of the stone building. He moved among the shuffling beasts—his father’s prize dairy cows, his father’s horse, and the pack ponies that carried Carnmore whisky down to the coast—filling troughs and lining the stalls with fresh hay.
Although some of the Speyside distilleries now had their own railway lines, ponies remained the only reliable way to get whisky out of the Braes, even in good weather. The paths the smugglers had used to move whisky down through the Ladder Hills now carried a le-gitimate product. As for supplies, they warehoused enough barley to last the season, water flowed freely year-round from the Carn More spring, and the peats came from their own moss.
When he’d finished in the barn, Will cleared a path to the distillery easily enough, as the buildings themselves had blocked the worst of the snow. But once inside the
main production house, he stood for a moment, trying to decide what to do. Distilling was a continuous process, made up of many interrelated steps. Barley lay soaking in the steeps, waiting for the maltster to determine when it had absorbed just the right amount of moisture; then the barley was spread on the mesh floor of the malt barn to germinate, after which it would dry in the peat fires of the kiln.
Once dried, the malt was ground into grist in the mill, and from there it was funneled into the enormous wooden mash tuns, where hot water would release the sugar from the grains. From the mash tuns the sugary liquid, called wort, ran into the great fermenting vessels.
This was the brewer’s domain: it was he who added the yeast, he who decided when the wash was ready for distilling. Then the stillman would take over, running the wash into the wash charger, and from it into the first of the great copper stills.
Carnmore used three stills rather than the traditional two, one wash still and two spirit stills. His father claimed that it was this further distillation that gave Carnmore whisky its smooth, light taste, and it was a su-perstitious practice among most distillers that nothing which gave a whisky its distinct character should be changed—not a cobweb swept away nor a dent repaired in the copper stills.
From the final still, the whisky ran through the glass cabinet of the still safe, where it was carefully monitored by both the stillman and the distillery’s excise officer.
This was raw, colorless stuff, not yet deserving of the name Scotch whisky. It would take at least five years of aging in oak casks in the earthen-floored warehouse before it would be bottled under the distillery’s name, or sold to blenders, and some was kept to age longer. It gave
Will pause to think that he would be near his father’s age before some of the whisky now being casked was ready to drink.
Each of these processes had its own time schedule, and each required several men as well as a skilled supervisor.
How, Will wondered, was he to manage on his own?
He could make a start, at least, by lighting the office fire. Going in, he lit the oil lamp on his father’s desk, then quickly arranged peats and sticks in the fireplace. As the flames caught, he sat for a moment, warming himself and taking comfort from the familiar objects. The great leather-bound ledger lay open on the desk, his father’s reading spectacles resting atop it. Along one wall, oak shelves held ranks of bottles covered with a fine layer of dust. The carriage clock ticked loudly in the silence.
Since he had left the Chapeltown school at fourteen, Will had chafed at the limited life of the distillery, dreaming of going to Edinburgh to study medicine like his Grant grandfather. But his father had believed him too young to go so far from home; nor had Charles been willing to give up his own dream of Will continuing in the family business.
Now, as Will recalled the helplessness he’d felt that morning when faced with his father’s illness, he wondered if he really was suited for the pursuit of medicine.
Then he thought of his father’s whispered entreaty to take care of the distillery, and he stood, leaving the old office chair rocking. He could at least turn the germinating malt on his own, and ready the peat fires for the kiln and the stills.
Stepping out into the alleyway between the production house and the malt barn, he stopped, listening, and relief flooded through him. He heard voices, carrying clearly in the still air. Will waded to the rise above the track that led
down to the village and shaded his eyes with his hand. A dozen dark specks moved against the whiteness; it was a good half of the distillery crew, shoveling their way up the track.
Will shouted and waved, a voice shouted something unintelligible back, and Will began digging his way to meet them.
The men made good progress and soon met Will, with much slapping of arms and thumping of shoulders. It was all the men from Chapeltown—those who lived outside the village would have a more difficult time of it.
“Aye, it’s only a half day’s work lost,” said Alasdair Smith, the stillman, as they swung down their spades again to widen Will’s path. Smith, a large, burly man with a red beard, was no relation to the Smiths of The Glenlivet but always made a point to tell new acquaintances that he had just as good a nose for whisky. “No self-respecting Hielander would let a bittie snow get the better o’ him,” he added, his teeth showing white against his beard as he grinned.
