Every year the cream of Scotland comes to Boisdale of Belgravia to celebrate Scottish talent and to toast the winner of the Johnnie Walker Blue Label Great Scot award. Boisdale is quietly opulent. The mighty banqueting tables and blood-red walls decorated with country views suggest baronial splendour in a modern key. It’s Balmoral with central heating. Our host, Andrew Neil, began on a note of unapologetic patriotism. ‘Scotland invented the modern world,’ he said, and reeled off a list of his homeland’s greatest contributions to world culture. Tarmac, television and Tennent’s Super didn’t get a mention and instead he focused on ‘the decimal point, the cure for scurvy and the patron saint of Ireland, St Patrick. And let’s not forget,’ he added mischievously, ‘the love of the Queen Mother.’
Before the prizegiving came the haggis and whisky. Far off, we heard an eerie descant. A lone piper marched into the room accompanied by a waiter bearing aloft a nimbus of spiced offal that steamed and glinted on its silver platter. The haggis was moist, almost velvety in texture, and we devoured it with noggins of Johnnie Walker Black Label. With an expert distiller on hand to give advice we explored the blend’s numerous flavours. It was like a hallucinogenic chemistry lesson. ‘First take a massive, massive gulp,’ our teacher ordered bluntly, ‘and swirl it round for a good ten seconds to cleanse the palette and anaesthetise the mouth.’ It did that all right. He asked us ‘to look for the honey sweetness at the front’ and let the liquid ‘glide to the back of the throat’, and enjoy ‘the rich fruit’. A warm peppery softness filled my senses as it slid south.
More noggins came. More went.
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