20 • AGENDA
• FEATURE: GOING COMMANDO Walk the walk,
talk the talk… Some Royal Marines slang to chew over with your dram…
Wet: any drink, alcoholic or otherwise Essence: good, tasty, beautiful. Applicable to great Scotch and can also describe an attractive woman Hoofing: fantastic, can be applied to anything and everything Honking: the polar opposite of hoofing, as in truly horrendous Oggin: water, derived from the identifier used for the English Channel during World War Two Scran: food, all types Icers: cold, as in “it’s icers tonight, how about a dram?” Threaders: annoyed, unhappy – how you may feel if you dropped your prize bottle of malt!
here who don’t like whisky after bad experiences in their younger days,” says Hudson, “but they end up trying it again and the result is that, apart from those who are completely teetotal, I can’t think of anyone here who doesn’t enjoy their whisky, and who doesn’t leave liking it even more than they did before.” Proving the point, several marines
join Hudson and myself at the bar for a Society tasting because, as well as the bottle I’m leaving behind, I’m also armed with a few others to be put through their paces at the hands of 45’s finest. First up is Cask No. 29.110, ‘Wild
West cowgirl dressed in leather’, which immediately caught their attention for some reason. I can’t think why. A heavy- hitter with smoke, liquorice and sea salt, the Marines quickly and correctly identify this 10-year old as an Islay dram, with smoke, leather and sweetness all cropping up in their comments to match the references to “tar, ash, liquorice and dark chocolate” in the Tasting Notes. In summary, one simply calls it,
“essence”, which is Marine-speak for ‘very tasty’ or ‘beautiful’ (for a full glossary of Marine slang, see ‘Walk the walk...’ above). Cask No 26.82, ‘Soft light at sunset’,
is up next, and the sweet creamy notes flagged up in the Tasting Notes are plucked out in short order by our tasters, as are this dram’s characteristic woody hints (described as “open pine cones” in the Tasting Notes). Without a pause, we’re straight into Cask
No. 73.46, ‘Cockle-warming citric rush’. Lieutenant Mitch Sykes takes a thoughtful nose and taste before picking out the
THE SCOTCH MALT WHISKY SOCIETY
Having a nose around: Lieutenant Mitchell Sykes (left) and Captain Richard Moat sample the Society drams
warm fruits (the Tasting Notes refer to “a citric crush of orange and lime – fruit, rind, leaves”) from this 12-year-old malt. As the conversation flows, it’s obvious
this bunch are a cut above the average whisky drinker and all have acquired the smarts to break a dram down by nose, taste and aftertaste. With a bar like this at their disposal, it’s no surprise. Whisky high times are, however, only
a part of the story. Proud of their own reputation for working as hard as they play, 45 Commando here are the most active British military unit in Afghanistan, having spent more time there than any other since the conflict began.
Conversation turns to their most
recent six-month tour of the country’s Helmand Province and Hudson is positive about how things went. “In the time we were there, significant
acts of violence from the insurgents were down hugely from the previous year. We saw tangible progress and we were very fortunate in that we had no fatalities.” The unit did suffer two very serious injuries, however, which only serve as a very stark reminder of the harsh realities units like 45 Commando face on a routine basis. Realities that are as bound into the culture of this unit just as tightly as the whisky, and which find their expression
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