“And this is the kind of whisky you share with friends over slices of dry sausage, prosciutto, olives, pickles…” Our guide is clearly taken by Talisker Surge and picks up the bottle as he speaks, cradling it in his hands for emphasis.
“Maybe some hard cheese?” I volunteer. Whisky and cheese is one of my favourite pairings and I, too, have taken a shine to what I keep calling Surf (possibly because a whisky named after a phenomenon associated with natural disasters doesn’t feel quite aligned.)
“Yes, yes! You and I would get along well!”
Florian is not wrong. It’s a rainy Sunday in early February and we’re having fun being the only ones on Talisker’s ‘Made by the Sea’ immersive experience, as our guide goes far off-piste with chit chat about capitalism, customer service standards, work-life balance and local traditions of home distillation in Central Europe.
Hailing from Romania, he recounts the time that an EU inspector from Brussels arrived in his village outside Bratislava, looking to confiscate the small, portable pot stills that used to preserve the annual harvest of prunes, blueberries, apples, herbs and whatever else the season’s bounty has to offer. “He’s going door to door looking for distillation equipment, meanwhile we threw his car in the river! Two weeks later the EU amends regulations to allow for personal distillation of up to 25 litres per year!”
Florian has been living on Skye for eight years and, like many expats, has no intention of going anywhere else now that he’s found his happy place. That said, increased tourism has taken its toll on the island, so he’s relieved that Talisker can now accommodate an increased number of visitors, especially given that tours are booked out weeks in advance, particularly during a high season that gets longer with each passing year.
“The French and the Italians in particular have some kind of aversion to prebooking their visits; ‘but I’m on holiday’ they always say!” Florian sighs. “It makes absolutely no sense but I’m telling you, the meltdowns I’ve seen here when we’ve had to turn people away!”
As an alternative to a bricks-and-mortar tour, one could certainly do worse than ‘Made By The Sea’, a 30-minute sound-and-light show with a maximum capacity of twenty-two, and hosted in the kind of multimedia room that wouldn’t be out of place at the headquarters of a publicly traded tech giant.
It’s here that we’ve been seated at the oval of a wooden conference table inset with an impressively detailed 3D map of Skye – surrounded by the sea, natch – complete with the contours of its topography. The room’s lighting has been dimmed blue as an underwater video of aquatic life plays on all four walls, because ‘Made By The Sea’.
A complex lighting sequence animates the tabletop map as Skye’s contours turn luminescent green. Ripples of light mimic waves (quite convincingly) as they shimmy across the surface. Talisker’s origin story is narrated from surround sound speakers in an alluring Scottish brogue. Meanwhile the visuals pan from illustrations of Viking ships to Skye’s early settlers, to drone footage of the distillery interspersed with Skye’s most cherished vistas – the Quiraing, Old Man of Storr, Neist Point – the USPs of Scotland’s most popular destination, and ones that many will never see firsthand given the capricious weather, not to mention the effort involved.
As the theatrics come to a close we’re left with a feeling of awe, but in truth no wiser about Talisker other than it’s a wild thing from a wild place (made by the sea) accessible to even the not-so-wild-at-heart. Strangely enough – absent our guide’s colourful banter – the post-show whisky tasting itself feels tame after the sound-and-light fanfare, as it keeps to the usual three-card monte of most standard tours: in this case the Talisker 10 Year Old, the latest distillery exclusive needing to be sold, and dealer’s choice, which today is Talisker Surf, as I’ve renamed my latest crush.
Regardless of your motive for visiting Talisker, it’s hard to be unimpressed by this ‘multisensory tasting’ for which clearly no expense has been spared. This is a museum quality exhibit, and without a doubt it’s a more engaging experience for holiday makers who struggle to find joy in the sights and sounds of industrial equipment. In its stead ‘Made By The Sea’ offers slick production values in a comfortable tasting room, to the background thrum of a well-oiled marketing machine that borrows heavily on nature and rugged terrains, all the while teeming Apple Store vibes.
Given that environmentalism is a predominant theme at Talisker – witness copies of ‘How to Live Plastic Free’ in the gift shop – I find myself pondering questions of planned obsolescence, the ease of recycling the composite materials of Skye’s 3D map, and why a distillery’s visitor centre should require a complete overhaul less than ten years after its last renovation in 2013 — all the while its stills, production equipment, buildings, even casks, have been built to last for decades.
I swat at these inconvenient thoughts like a fly and remind myself that we’ve been having fun here: surely the materials are carefully recycled from the previous visit centre to the next, and surely this will be the case when Talisker reimagines its ‘visitor experience’ in another decade, give or take a year.