In the latest of his monthly installments, Charles Maclean gives us his thoughts on the Old Pulteney WK499: Isabella Fortuna.
Charles also provides a fascinating history of the Old Pulteney Distillery.
The colour, which is full gold, suggests maturation in American oak ex-Bourbon casks, and this is borne out by the aroma and taste. In spite of the high strength, the nose is gentle, possibly slightly cooling. The first scents are warm and reminiscent of Eve's Pudding vanilla sponge and baked apples with a hint of mandarin behind.
In the mouth, the texture is soft, the taste lightly sweet to start, then both acidic and salty – not for nothing is Old Pulteney referred to as The Manzanilla of the North! Deliciously crisp and clean, with a spicy, shortish finish.
Occasion: The perfect aperitif!
Comment:
An excellent example of traditional Old Pulteney both ˜The Genuine Maritime Malt" and ˜The Manzanilla of the North": crisp and salty.
My son thought WK499 might be an abbreviation for WKD or Wicked when he saw that the bottling strength was 52% Alcohol by Volume. Actually, the name has nothing to do with this: WK499 might also have been named Isabella Fortuna “ gentler, more feminine, more appropriate to the style of this exclusive malt"
Let me explain. WK499 is the registration number of one of the last herring drifters in existence. She was built in 1890, named Isabella, and based at Wick hence the WK. For 86 years she fished the waters of the North Sea and the German Ocean, as it used to be called. In 1919 she was fitted with a 15hp Kelvin engine, upgraded in 1928 and again in 1932, at which time here name was changed to Fortuna.
In 1976 she was retired, refurbished and re-christened with both her previous names; twenty-one years later she was acquired by the Wick Society as a lasting monument to the town's long and distinguished fishing tradition. The reverse of the bottle of WK499 is embellished with a stencil of the Isabella Fortuna.
The port of Wick is named Pulteneytown. It was built between 1803 and 1820 as a model village by the British Fisheries Society, an organisation devoted to Extending the Fisheries and Improving the Sea Coasts of the Kingdom, and in Scotland to creating new communities in remote areas, exploring new farming methods, improving communications by building roads and bridges, and founding ports at Ullapool, Tobermory, Lochbay (Skye) and Pulteneytown, Wick.
Between 1796 and his death in 1805, the Society's Director General was Sir William Pulteney and on his recommendation a thirty-three year old engineer named Thomas Telford was appointed Surveyor General and instructed to tour the North-East coast and report on any small harbours worthy of improvement.
Herring was used merely as bait for white fish until 1768, when “three local men fitted out two sloops and fished for herring with great success. During the 1770s and 80s the success continued, with great shoals of herring visiting the north-east coat during the summer months. But fishing for them was greatly hampered for want of a good harbour. The coast being very open and dangerous, fishermen will not venture out in small boats but in very promising weather.
There were other problems, apart from the lack of a harbour. Most of the fishing from Wick was done by summer visitors, from different parts of the kingdom, during the season of herring fishery only. The indigenous fishermen were part-timers, having other jobs than fishing. Duties on salt and coal were high. There was an acute shortage of curing and storage facilities. By the end of the century there were upwards of 200 boats fishing out of Wick during the season, but they still had no harbour.
The two priorities were bridging the river and building a harbour. The first was soon achieved. The old wooden bridge was demolished and a new stone one built, to Telford's designs, by a local architect/builder, George Burn, completed by 1807. By 1811 the harbour was completed and attracting fishing boats from all over the British Isles. In parallel with the harbour works, and also according to Telford's design, Burn laid out and built the model village, with curing sheds and storehouses on the lower ground adjacent to the harbour and the river, and two-storey dwelling houses on the upper terrace, in a grid-pattern of streets with a large oval plaza at its heart.
Although Pulteney was dead before the work was completed, Telford named his new village after him. Today, Thomas Telford is recognised as˜The Father of Civil Engineering"; had it not been for his patron, Sir William Pulteney, this honour would not have been his.
With such a rapidly growing population during the 1820s, both resident and seasonal, it would have been surprising had a whisky distillery not been built in Pulteneytown!
Among the petty-gentry of Caithness at the time was James Henderson of Stemster, whose farm was located some fifteen miles to the south-west of Wick. Between 1821 and 1826 he held a license to distil there, but in the latter year he established, first a mill, then a brewery and distillery on the western edge of Pultneytown.
There was a ready local market for Old Pulteney. By the middle of the nineteenth century over a thousand boats were using the harbour, employing 3,800 fishermen and 4,000 associated trades. Wick had become the leading herring port in Europe. A local minister noted sourly that “there is a great consumption of spirits not less than 500 gallons of whisky a day when the fishing is successful there being 22 public houses in Wick and 23 in Pulteneytown seminaries of Satan and Belial.
James Henderson's descendants owned distillery until 1920, when they sold to the well-known firm of blenders, James Watson & Co of Dundee. The sale might well have been influenced by the fact that there were strong anti-drink pressures in Wick at this time, culminating two years later with the town voting to go dry.
There has never been a day like it in Wick's electoral history, wrote a local historian. Rowdy meetings were held in packed halls. A vigorous ˜No-Licence Union" had been established to counter the local branch of the Licence Holders Defence Association, and nothing would satisfy them but a complete ban. The Wick Salvation Army Group (led by the appropriately named Captain Dry!), paraded, as did the Boys Brigade – more than a hundred of the latter, bearing umbrellas inscribed: ˜VOTE NO TO LICENCE. AS I HAVE NO VOTE WILL YOU VOTE FOR ME?"
The License holders made the fatal mistake of reducing the price of drink on the day, as a result of which many of their supporters stayed in the pubs! The result was a landslide for the antis.
Prohibition remained in place until 28th May 1947. To mark the fiftieth anniversary of repeal, a 12YO bottling of Old Pulteney was released by the distillery owners (the first proprietary bottling). The sixtieth anniversary was marked by a charity ball at the distillery, in aid of the local R.N.L.I station. This has since become an annual event.
