Malt and Your Heart
Amongst the more practical pieces of advice I can offer, after years of navigating street food and back-alley kitchens in Asia and South America, is this: drink whisky with your meal.
Yes whisky. The “Auld Medicine”
Beer and wine are all well and good, but whisky provides a splendid cauterising effect, especially when a meal might come with an extra side of bacterial hitchhikers.
Trust me, it works wonders.
Whisky is not a drink, it’s an opinion.
It’s a peaty, smoky, slow-burning argument between geography, history, chemistry and stout men in Harris tweed.
Whisky is also a prescription, though not from some patchouli-scented herbalist in Shoreditch but from the white-coated high priests of medical science. Yes, the sort who make grown men hand over their urine in little cups.
A recent study, conducted with all the po-faced solemnity of a Vatican conclave, has set out to determine whether a stiff 100ml of malt whisky could do more than lubricate conversation and blunt the edge of unbearable in-laws.
Specifically, could it increase plasma total phenol content and antioxidant capacity in otherwise healthy male volunteers? In plain speak, does whisky give your blood a fighting chance?
Nine brave souls, presumably lured by the promise of free booze, submitted themselves to a Latin square trial…..think Roman orgy of data, but with less wine and more statistical rigour.
Over three sessions, one week apart and on an empty stomach, they downed whisky and then sat around while scientists siphoned off their blood and urine at intervals.
You know, for science.
Within thirty minutes of drinking the whisky, a proper malt, not some teenage blend trying to grow chest hair, they all exhibited a marked uptick in plasma total phenols.
That’s the sort of biochemical flourish that gets cardiologists stroking their chins. More importantly, their antioxidant capacity also rose, as measured by something called FRAP, a fancy way of seeing how well your blood can beat back the molecular mongrels known as free radicals.
Now, here’s the juicy bit. This was compared to the same test as the ‘new make’ spirit, which is whisky before it’s seen the inside of an oak barrel. Can’t think why they bother as it must be like reading Shakespeare without the vowels.
It’s raw, angry, unfinished, lacking the soul, and, crucially, the phenols that seem to work molecular magic on your cardiovascular system.
This isn’t just a whimsical aside for whisky evangelists. The inference here is that ageing, that noble and expensive process by which spirit and cask have long, whispered conversations, is what endows whisky with its virtuous properties.
All those woody tannins, elegant esters (a condensation reaction), and strong anti-oxidants drifting into the dram are apparently not just for show, they’re doing something. Possibly something noble.
What does this mean for your arteries? Well, if you’re the sort of person who believes breakfast is the most important meal of the day, you may not care. But for those of us who think life is better filtered through a crystal tumbler, there’s a flicker of vindication.
Antioxidants are the molecular equivalent of a good butler, quietly removing trouble before it stains the carpet. And since oxidative stress is the villain behind coronary heart disease, whisky’s phenolic boost may indeed be the cardiovascular equivalent of a polite slap on the back.
Of course, before you trade your gym membership for a dram of 15-year old GlenTurret, it must be said that this is a modest study, a scientific appetiser, not a full course of evidence.
And moderation is still the nagging chorus. Too much of a good thing and you’re not curbing heart disease, you’re fuelling divorce lawyers and liver specialists.
But let’s not be churlish. For those of us who sip rather than slosh, who revere the dram not as intoxication but as meditation, this is delicious news. Whisky doesn’t just warm the cockles of your heart, it might just be helping to keep it beating, too.
Distilleries go to great and noble lengths to coax water out of whisky, through still and spirit safe, through copper coil and oak cask, only for some philistine at the other end to pour it back in as if making Bovril. Such sacrilege should not be merely frowned upon but dealt with ecclesiastically: excommunication, public penance, and a banishment to the communion wine aisle.
In Edinburgh, God’s own dram-drinking capital, step into any creaking, nicotine-stained bar, and watch the veterans at their altar. They take their whisky neat, flanked only by a humble glass of water. The two do not mingle. No. They are taken in turn. One to taste the fire, the other to cool the flame. Not dilution, but discretion. A genteel negotiation with the liver, rather than an insult to the spirit.
Because whisky is not a cocktail. It is not a playground. It is a sermon. And water is not the christener, it’s the chaser.
From a properly Calvinist, kilt-swathed Scots perspective, the only point of view worth having on the matter is the spelling – whisky. No “e”, no cutesy American flourish, no Irish whimsy. Just whisky, lean, peated and Protestant.
And for the love of Burns it is never called “Scotch”. That diminutive, linguistic burp of a word, belongs in the same midden as clip-on tartan and shortbread tins with labradors on them.
Whisky is a thing of mysterious and sacred significance, not a souvenir.
Find out why – Raw Spirit: In Search of the Perfect Dram https://uk.bookshop.org/a/12630/9781529124781
Whisky and Complementary Food
What’s the best food to eat with whisky? Haggis of course (unfortunately still banned by the US Department of Agriculture as it contains sheep lungs which is considered inedible).
Lightweights!
Haggis is a traditional Scottish meat pudding with unique ingredients including the organs of a sheep: liver, lungs, and heart. These are minced with oatmeal, suet, onions, and a fistful of defiant spice, then stirred with the kind of fervour that insists suffering is character-building.
It’s typically made with sheep’s offal (liver, lungs, and heart), mixed with oatmeal, suet, onions, spices, and salt, and is therefore rich in vitamins and minerals like vitamin A, B12, folate, iron, and selenium. The oats contribute to fibre intake,
Traditionally, this melange is stuffed into a sheep’s stomach, the whole parcel then boiled into something that looks like a collapsed rugby ball. Nowadays, the squeamish use synthetic casing, a small mercy in a dish otherwise untroubled by modernity or compassion.
The standard preparation for haggis is not so much a culinary act as a pagan ritual, but you don’t need to dress up as a druid under a full moon with antlers on (unless you want to!).
Take the entire beast, at least its stitched-up stomach sac and lob it into a cauldron of water hot enough to baptise a lobster.
Let it bubble there for about 45 minutes.
Then plate it up like you mean it. Neaps and tatties….. that’s swede and spuds for the uninitiated. Mash them while chanting “we fought the English for this.”
Add a root vegetable or two.
Some romantics like to lace their haggis with holy water, aka whisky, but I prefer my whisky separate, in a glass.
While haggis howls in barbaric tones; whisky is the velvet assassin. Together, they sing the song of clans too stubborn to die and too proud to serve salad.
I love it.
Slàinte Mhath
Graeme Dinnen
ResourcesForLife.net
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