July 31 - Invergordon, Scotland

We are in the Scottish Highlands and oil is a big thing here - along with whisky, but more on that later.  By the way, whiskey, spelled with the "e", is the Irish way of doing it.

We've sailed past the oil rigs at work in the ocean, but now we've sailed past them here getting repaired or maintained. 

On the left, you can see something suspended from the crane above.  There are people in there being hoisted onto the platform.

The UK is committed to using only clean energy by 2050.  If that actually happens, these will be a thing of the past.  I believe our guide said that they already have enough solar and wind power (at full capacity) to power Scotland.

 Invergordon is the port for Inverness and Loch Ness, but we have visited them both before, so we elected to do a different tour this time.

The photos taken from a moving bus aren't great, but they give an idea of the beautiful countryside of the Highlands

Here are some of "The Fields of Barley" that Sting sang about.  He's a local boy from Wallsend near Newcastle.  (Well, local enough).

Our tour was of the Glen Ord Distillery which is one of three in Scotland which make whisky under the Singleton brand.  This one makes whisky for the Asian market, the other two for the European and American markets.  They are each a little different based on the tastes of the market.  Glen Ord has been distilling whisky here since 1836.  

The gift shop and cafe area were really beautiful.

The tour explained the various steps involved in distilling whisky.  From the first mixing of the barley and water to putting it into the aging vats takes only about a month.

These huge vats are made from Oregon pine trees because they grow so tall.  She said that many whiskies are soaked (not the right term) in stainless steel.  It makes no difference to the taste.  Glen Ord uses the wood because they can get them into this area by putting them together like Ikea furniture.  If they used the one-piece stainless steel vats, they'd have to take the ceiling off to get them in.

Here's where the distilling takes place and it's distilled twice.

Then we got to smell two barrels from the other distilleries.  It was easy to tell the whisky intended for the American market as it was very familiar.  The European market whisky seemed lighter to me.

Then we got a small sample of the whisky from Glen Ord which is sent to the Asian market.  I didn't really care for it that much.

Back in the gift shop you could "bottle your own".

This sounds like the frou-frou descriptions of wine that make no sense to me.

It was a fun excursion and the ride through the countryside and small towns was most enjoyable.

Back on board we had a respectable 14/15 in Trivia for 2 points.  Another good dinner in Compass Rose.  It is quite noticeable that the ship is almost full as the restaurant had only a few available tables when we left around 8:00 pm.