04/05/2021 The Founder's Tale

Dear reader,

You may  recall that, over a year and a half ago, tOMoH and friends attended an SMWS event during which the SMWS founder, Phillip 'Pip' Hills, talked about the early days of the SMWS and other adventures of his. You may also recall that the event left a bitter taste, for the value for money was lower than it was north of the border, and the drams offered were seemingly random drams available from the bar at the time. Finally, you will remember Hills was promoting his new book, which we all received a copy of on the night.

Well, tOMoH finished reading the book. No, it did not take him a year and a half. It took him a year and a half to start it, then a few days to devour it.

Let us get this out of the way: Pip Hills's The Founder's Tale: A Good Idea and a Glass of Malt, Birlinn, 2019, is not a book about whisky. As The Way of Whisky, it is a book about life, which happens to mention whisky with some frequency. Indeed, it is an autobiography, or, more accurately, selected excerpts from the life of Pip Hills. And what a life!

Here is the entertaining tale of a man who turns out to be a resourceful adventurer; he seems to have travelled everywhere on the planet, can build or repair anything with only minimal or makeshift tooling and has done both those things within the financial constraints that apply to any regular person. If this book were made into a television series, it would probably rival MacGyver.

What is more, it is not just the content that is good: Hills is a talented storyteller, and an excellent writer. His style captivated me, as the stories filled me with disbelief, made me laugh wholeheartedly, and shed a tear in the space of three pages.

Along the chapters, we encounter a number of colourful, larger-than-life characters, and situations so implausible that they simply cannot be made up. The book tells how the author came to own his famous Lagonda (and, incidentally, how much he paid for it), several boats, casks of whisky (of course) and various companies, as well as the parts that his many friends played. It also tells the fortunes and misfortunes that go along with each of those. It is honest in portraying the charismatic main protagonist as someone who, in more ways than one, flies by the seat of his pants (or "think[s] on [his] feet," as he says himself). Indeed, Pip Hills comes across as a character who, faced with a challenge, embraces the chance to grow; someone who, when seeing an opportunity, seizes it. In other words: he makes lemonade with the lemons that life sends his way. A refreshing take on the famous: "Where do you see yourself in five years?" interview question.

Nevertheless, the man is very lucid regarding his luck. He acknowledges that the circumstances were very different in the early-1980s and that he foresaw a market that, at the time, virtually did not exist in the UK. There are some advantages to being a trailblazer, and this tale illustrates that perfectly.

This work is also a humbling life lesson, as one inevitably compares the author's life to their own. Few are those who can look back and say they have achieved as much as Pip Hills. Fewer still do so with the modesty that common decency requires.

After my encounter with the author, my simplistic analysis was: posh Edinburgher buys whisky for his posher mates; his mates tell their mates; things grow out of control; the SMWS is born.

Humble pie has been eaten, and that hasty judgement has had to be revised. Based on the book, it is apparent that Pip Hills is not exactly rich and never was; he is simply in that category of people whose relation to money encourages them to spend it as it comes in. He does/did count some affluent people amongst the seemingly infinite pool of friends he maintains, but not all of them are/were.

I sincerely hope the book is made into a cartoon one day -- each chapter an episode. There are a lot of inspiring lessons in there for all to learn, and treated with such humour and candour that the whole is accessible to all.

If the above was not clear, tOMoH recommends the book.

What else but an ancient SMWS bottling to punctuate that?

18.15 35yo 1966/2001 Curry powder and dark rum (67.5%, SMWS Society Cask Old Masters Collection, Sherry Cask): nose: as bold and muscular as the colour and ABV might lead one to think. This has camphor, cypress resin, wood polish by the bucket, rich-but-dry earth, sawn redwood, naphtha and, generally speaking, it gives the feeling of walking into a sawmill, or a dense-forest clearing. Blackcurrant and myrtles emerge, after a wee while, served on a wet-card plate. I detect a bowl of warm porridge in the next room, grapefruit zest and teak oil. Yes, it invariably comes back to heavy, heady woody notes, which, of course, is great for those who are into that sort of things (I am). It is relatively clear that this powerful spirit attacked the wood with a pickaxe and extracted loads from it! Woodworm and crushed walnut shells, wood polish, maybe even shoe polish. The second nose turns up the meatiness one may associate with an Oloroso maturation (there is no indication on the label that that is the case, but it seems rather obvious), and it has pastrami, for a fleeting moment. Then, the wood comes back, softly bitter, in the fashion of Gingerino or Chinotto. With water, it becomes total grapefruit, with desiccated zest spilled on a plain table partly eaten by woodworm. The diluted nose definitely has garam masala, too. Mouth: surprisingly approachable, at first, it gives an unexpected fruitiness, again in the form of grapefruit. Oh! it is acidic alright. The immense horsepower soon catches up, and so does the wood factor. Redwood oil, gently bitter, encaustic, sawn (dried) logs, garam masala, ground mace, ground ginger, nutmeg, amchur (mango powder) and (desiccated) grapefruit zest is never far behind. Spectacular. Water increases the grapefruit-like acidity, while the sawn logs and other wood elements become mere backing instruments. Finish: again, it feels surprisingly moderate, and it is only after ten seconds or so that the warmth becomes apparent -- once one's body realises there is a gaping hole where one's digestive system used to be, presumably... ;-) This finish blends the acidic sweetness of fruits (without surprise, grapefruit is still prominent, pink grapefruit, yet also pineapple) and the bitterness of woody undertones (ground avocado stone comes to mind). The second sip sees yoghurt tame the wood, a gingery type of yoghurt, and even melted chocolate of the bitter sort. A bowl of melted dark chocolate, punctuated by grapefruit zest, grated ginger and a drop of cypress sap. Water turns that on its head, and wood takes over -- a derelict sawmill, in which the cut logs and sawdust have not been touched for decades, nutmeg, amchur, and grapefruit, taking it easy in the back, its acidity almost completely swapped for the bitterness of its skin. Formidable. Uncompromising. Love it. 9/10