One of the great joys for visitors to Scotland is to tour a distillery, or even several, and enjoy a dram of the house best at the end of the tour.
I recently praised the growing number of distilleries that have recognised the problem this poses for drivers and now provide a tiny bottle or jar so drivers can take their dram with them and enjoy it later, either at home or at their next overnight stop.
Now Moray Council, who have more distilleries on their patch than any other in Scotland, have ordered the post-tour dram to be cut to 10 millilitres (two teaspoons) from the previous 25. It has the advantage of ensuring a driver could drink it and still remain well below the Scotland-only 50 mics level.
Some distilleries will doubtless welcome it as it means cutting the dram ration by 60%, although others will bristle at having a local authority telling them what to do in a domain that until now was pretty much at their discretion.
I also feel a 10ml dram is parsimony incarnate. Come on, 25ml is a basic pub measure, which doesn’t exactly set the heather alight. We like to stress Scots hospitality in all our tourism advertising, and a 10ml dram certainly doesn’t do that image any favours. I can see the day when distillery drams will be dispensed with an eye-dropper or when the powers-that-be will ban them altogether.
Such a negative approach is daft. Scotch whisky is this country’s most enduring and iconic export. Countless thousands of tourists flock here every year specifically to visit distilleries. Even those keen to see castles and Nessie always include a distillery visit on their tour. Whisky tourism earns Scotland millions and also boosts the industry as those tourists will buy more Scotch when they return home. And Scotch whisky will still be thriving when, sad to say, North Sea Oil is a distant memory.
There is also a slight irony to the Moravian 10ml rule. In Eastern Europe, Moravians are by far the world’s biggest spirit drinkers, swamping 19 litres – or 1900 units – per head per annum.
