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The heather was blooming, the meadows were mawn,
Our lads gaed a-hunting ae day at the dawn
The Bonie Moor Hen
Robert Burns
Where do you start with the story of one of the world's great whiskies? Master Blender Robert Hicks is in no doubt.
'Begin by nosing,' he says, pouring a goodly measure of Ballantine's 17 Years Old into tulip glasses.
We are sitting on tartan sofas in the warmth of his panelled sampling room as he appraises his amber gold whisky against the light. Outside, the first fingers of winter run through the trees and a crisp wind is blowing from nearby Loch Lomond.
Robert adds a little water to release the bouquet of 17 Years Old and slides the jug across for me to follow suit. 'The aroma lies in layers,' he explains, nosing the spirit lightly. 'The secret is to uncover them one by one, going deeper and deeper into the heart of the whisky.'
I follow his example, picking up oak and heather sweetness. A hint of smokiness here, a distant waft of shoreline there. Woodlands, wet grass, wild flowers.
Robert closes his eyes and contemplates the richness of his creation. Subtle, complex aroma combinations that lead irrevocably back to the beginning. The wild countryside where they originated.
And I knew then where to start. Ballantine's 17 Years Old is the true spirit of Scotland - a rich tapestry of regional aromas and flavours. Whisky with the flavour of the landscape itself - mountain water, ripe barley, peat smoke and heather.
As Robert's thoughts explored the wonders of his whisky, mine turned to the last great wilderness where it all began.
Peat and heather are essential, and almost unique, to the distinctive flavour of Scotch and its 1,000 years of tradition and culture. Neither are found in American whiskies, but small traces of peat are detectable in Japanese whisky.
'It's very difficult to translate peat into some languages because it simply doesn't exist,' Robert Hicks explains. 'The closest you can get is compacted vegetable matter that has decayed - in other words, very young coal.'
Vast tracts of the Highlands and Islands are covered in a mantle of peat. Its soft texture enables it to be easily sliced with narrow spades and stacked to dry for fuel. Mainland peat - as opposed to the beachcomber tang of Islay peat - has a scent of heather and gorse which sits comfortably in the whisky without any need to hunt for it.
'It contributes a trace of smokiness,' Robert says. 'But smokiness is an odd word. If you talk about smokiness to people who don't know whisky, they think of tobacco smokiness. A better term is "reek", which means a waft of flavour.'
Calluna vulgaris, better known as heather, 'heath', or sometimes 'ling', contributes a distinctive floral note to whisky. The hardy plant is found across remote areas of northern Europe, but nowhere more abundantly than the heaths and bogs of the central and eastern Highlands. It is no coincidence, perhaps, that this is also where most of Scotland's malt whisky is made.
Heather gives Scotland's rugged countryside its colour and lends a distinctive aroma to whisky. It thrives in peaty soil and has an ability to exist in exposed conditions and the bleakest weather. No matter how hard the winter, heather always returns in spring. By late summer, glens and mountainsides are painted purple with its distinctive flowers. There are unusual varieties in white, pink and a rare blue strain growing among the rocks of the central Highlands.
Highland Scots regularly burn heather to encourage it to grow. Fresh young shoots are the favourite food of red grouse, Scotland's most important game bird. Heather flowers, harvested centuries ago to brew delicately-scented ale, also provide nectar for honey-bees.
The rugged little plant was traditionally bound into strands of strong rope; used to thatch cottages; provide bedding; make heads for sweeping brushes and green and yellow dyes to colour home-woven tartans. Throughout Britain, a sprig of heather is still regarded as a powerful symbol of good luck. Understandably, emigrating Scots were reluctant to leave their most versatile plant behind. Some took it with them to America, where it now grows wild in places.
Just as whisky's characteristic ingredients come from nature, so the skill and craftsmanship in making 17 Years Old has never lost touch with the landscape.
Some years ago, Jack Goudy, former Master Blender and custodian of Ballantine's 17 Years Old for almost half a century, plunged his legendary nose into a glass of single malt and frowned. There was an aroma that clearly did not belong. A meadowy perfume was not unusual in whisky, but this was something specific.
Jack sniffed the glass of Pulteney again and held it to the light. The delicate whisky shone pale gold with an almost greenish tinge, just as it should. There was a hint of sweetness, overshadowed by a peaty reek and a salt tang of the shore - exactly what was expected from the most northerly distillery on mainland Britain.
Yet there was something else. And Jack knew exactly what it was. He picked up his phone and reported it to Tom Scott, former Managing Director. Tom, who was as aware as Jack of the rigorous standards at Pulteney, a whitewashed huddle of distillery buildings clinging to the North Sea coast, found it hard to believe.
'Jack,' he said emphatically. 'There's no way primroses could have crept into Pulteney.'
'Sorry, but they have,' Jack insisted, going on to name a particular, long-forgotten Scottish variety.
Tom, who was an enthusiastic gardener, laughed. Floral notes are common in whisky, but not primrose. This species of Primula Scotica was so rare, it hadn't been seen for years, let alone found its way into whisky.
Jack Goudy put the sample bottle to one side on his work-top. As one of Scotland's greatest whisky blenders and an elder statesman of the industry, his ordered mind could not abide an unsolved mystery. Jack's head housed a memory bank lined with thousands of deposit boxes, each containing carefully labelled smells. And among them, one that was unusual.
Before long, an inspection team was despatched to Wick, where the rocky tip of Scotland tumbles into the grey North Sea. Nothing remotely resembling primulas was found in the distillery.
When Hector MacLennan, Jack's colleague and a walking encyclopaedia of whisky knowledge, recounts the story, he can't resist breaking into a broad smile.
'The expeditionary force then decided to investigate Old Pulteney's water source,' he recalls. 'And there, in the lade carrying water from the Loch of Hempriggs down to the distillery, they discovered a colony of rare primrose growing on the banks. It turned out to be of such interest that local conservationists erected a fence around it.'
The significance of the story, to anyone who understands the mysteries of whisky as intimately as Jack Goudy and Hector MacLennan, is the direct link between a dram of finest Scotch whisky such as 17 Years Old and the untamed landscape from which it originates.
'The palate of whisky begins with the water used, which may be soft or hard, peaty or crystal-clean,' Hector says. 'There may be dryness from the use of peat in malting, sweetness from barley or corn, fruitiness from yeast, oakiness from the barrel, and perhaps the kiss of sherry or even of sea air.'
To understand the character of the country is to be close to nature and the rich colours and teeming smells essential to its make-up. The making and maturation of fine whisky absorbs all these qualities, making Ballantine's 17 Years Old the essence of Scotland distilled.
To help unravel this ancient mystery, Hector MacLennan, a Director of Trade Relations at Ballantine's, devised a box of smell samples which he uses to illustrate the links between 17 Years Old and Scotland's unique landscape.
'In a fine blended whisky there are literally hundreds of smells,' he explains. 'By isolating some of them, the olfactory nerves can be used to discover a clear connection between the whisky and the natural environment it comes from.'
All the smells in Hector's kit are common to both the Scottish countryside and Ballantine's 17 Years Old. They include mountain heather; peat; burnt wood; peat smoke; wild honeysuckle flowers; vanilla; pine; cinnamon; fruit cake; wood smoke; charcoal; cut grass; seaweed; forest; the sea shore; mixed herbs; almond and chocolate.
Chocolate? 'A chocolate smell and texture comes not from any of the ingredients of 17 Years Old, but when they are combined in the blend itself,' Hector smiles. 'Good whisky is full of mystery.'
The purity of the water and the barley which go into Ballantine's 17 Years Old are of crucial importance. And the commitment of vigilant, experienced staff ensures that the brand remains the finest in the world. Nature remains a vital ingredient. Attuning to its subtle changes helps the skilled craftsmen who produce 17 Years Old maintain its quality.
Like many Scots, Hector is a keen fisherman and standing in a river, surrounded by trees with the sound of water flowing over granite, is his idea of heaven.
'The smells I get from Ballantine's are often those I'm aware of in the river when I'm fishing,' he explains. 'They are woody smells from the trees. One of my personal favourites is the smell of wet birchwood after the rain.
'These forest smells are particularly important because they are absorbed by the casks as the whisky matures. One warehouse, for instance, is absolutely surrounded by trees - plantations of birch, pine and all kinds of deciduous trees. Woody smells are absorbed not just from the oak of the cask itself, but the atmosphere of the place where the whisky slowly matures.'
A key to the exquisite flavour of 17 Years Old is understanding the balance and harmony of nature. For example, when peat was dug at Ardbeg, one of the keynote malts of 17 Years Old, the upper layers were not used. Peat cutters traditionally went for the lower, highly-compacted layers, around 7,000 years old, to achieve the full smoky, peaty richness of the whisky.
The rich assortment of natural aromas that peat, heather and other plants bring to whisky spring from Scotland's unique climate and geography. Although 'geology' was a word originally coined in Switzerland, most of the groundwork of the science was carried out in Scotland. The reason, quite simply, is that there are few places with more ancient or varied rock formations.
Despite its cities, its industry and a vibrant population of 5 million, Scotland is still largely rural. The home of the world's best whisky covers 30,000 square miles of what ecologists refer to as the last great wilderness in Europe.
The distance from Dumfries in the south to Thurso in the far north is the same as the distance from London to Edinburgh. A place so vast that climbers can go missing for days. So wild that the wolf population, once hunted to extinction, has been restored and is flourishing again. Yet so intimate and familiar that thousands are drawn to its peace and solitude for fishing, deer stalking, climbing and skiing.
The Scottish Highlands, created 500 million years ago, are among the oldest rock formations on earth. However, they are by no means the highest - while 65 per cent of the Highlands lie above 120 metres, only 6 per cent is above 600 metres.
Sixty million years ago, the last active volcano in Scotland subsided, leaving a dramatic landscape. Much later, around 15,000 years ago, mountain tops were sheared by moving glaciers as the Ice Age, with its cycles of freezing and melting, smoothed them into rounded shapes.
Other ice movements created 700 scattered islands close to the coast. Inland, rivers of melted snow smoothed the granite into deep glens which became cloaked by heather and sparse trees. And retreating ice gouged water-filled basins which, in time, became Scotland's famous lochs.
Over tens of thousands of years a barren landscape evolved, breathtaking in its beauty. Gradually the ice melted, exposing fresh soil and water. Wind-borne seeds, such as Scots pine and silver birch, followed the retreating ice, sowing vast tracts of forest. Bears moved in, building dens deep among the trees, wild pigs rooted for acorns, red deer and squirrels followed.
For several thousand years, thick forests covered 60 per cent of Scotland. Gradually they disappeared, some cleared by early clan communities, soil erosion, and the cultivation of livestock and crops. By the Middle Ages, four-fifths of Scotland's ancient forests had ceased to exist. In 1250, for example, the monks of Melrose Abbey had cleared trees for 22,000 breeding sheep.
Forests were further reduced by the 'Clearances', which affected the Highlands and Islands between 1785 and 1850. Tens of thousands of clansmen were turned out of their homes to make way for large-scale sheep farming in changes designed to maximise land yield and boost owners' income.
Today Scotland still has occasional forest expanses. Its mountains, lochs and glens, in close proximity to each other, lend Highland scenery a rugged, ever-changing appearance. Hardy trees and heathers flourish, clear streams flow through thick peat over granite, while sheltered plains make ideal barley-growing country.
Perfect conditions for making the world's most distinctive whisky.
Scotland lies on a latitude between 55 and 60 degrees north. Deforestation should have made the climate colder but, thanks partly to Scotland's location in the warm Gulf Stream, there are few extremes of temperature and plenty of moist air carried on mild north-westerly winds - warm soft rain, known as 'Scotch mist'.
Like the deeply incised landscape, the climate also has moods and extremes. Drifting summer peat smoke can be replaced in winter by snow gusting horizontally from mountain tops. Braemar, home of the Highland Games, has recorded temperatures of -27C (-17F). Weather so cold that fish in the nets froze rigid as they were pulled from the sea.
Tornadoes have ripped through Glasgow, destroying thousands of homes. Up to 9.37 inches of rain fell in a single day on Dumbarton. Blizzards have raged non-stop for 50 hours and gales of up to 123 mph were recorded at Lowther Hill, Strathclyde.
'One of the reasons Scotland makes the best whisky is that the malted barley is high in diastase and enzymes,' Hector explains. 'On long northern summer days, when it rarely grows dark, the light puts high levels of diastase into the malt. Understanding how and when to harvest the best of nature sets Ballantine's apart as The Scotch.'
Some claim that Scotland's native colours, reflected in its whisky, have also influenced Scots' character. Just as the strong light and shade of the Mediterranean are said to have shaped the emotional nature of its people, so the subtle pastels of the last great wilderness have imbued the Scots with a quiet sense of purpose and pride in achievement.
A wilderness of changing moods has instilled in the Scots a strong sense of survival. Centuries of living in these conditions have evolved qualities of toughness and tenacity as Scotland has adapted to changing times. Yet, throughout industrialisation and 20th-century technology, a kinship with nature coupled with patience, have remained central to the craftsmanship of creating 17 Years Old.
Jack Goudy's extraordinary ability to detect natural smells is paralleled by the talents of current Master Blender Robert Hicks, and those of the experts who select and grow our barley, maintain the purity of our water, and use their skills to work with wood in fashioning barrels.