Travels Well?

I can't be sure of that until I open it, but this bottle is certainly well travelled. I got it last night at the monthly St Bride's ceilidh from a Polish friend B. I'd helped her out with something before Christmas and when she got back after New Year said she had brought me back something from Poland. It's taken a while to actually meet up as I was at a Burns Supper the night of the January ceilidh and B was unwell in February. Anyway, we met up last night (an excellent evening's dancing with music from The Robert Fish Band) and she gave me this, a bottle of Ballantine's Finest - blended scotch whisky. Complete with red and white ribbon, in the colours of the Polish flag.

Which was a little amusing, as a bottle blended in Dumbarton, made its way to Edinburgh, seventy miles away, by way of Silesia and a journey of at least 2,500 miles. And that's just the quickest route. More likely, in these days of distribution networks that it made the journey in several jumps, adding to the distance covered.

Never having sampled this blend, I was curious and did a bit of research. Apparently it is very popular across Europe, so much so that production is geared to international sales, meaning it's relatively unusual in Scotland.

It is a blend of more than fifty single malts and grain whiskies from the four whisky regions of Scotland - Islay, Highlands, Speyside and Lowlands - so the contents of the bottle must have clocked up significantly more mileage before even leaving Dumbarton. Based on a quick calculation and a conservative estimate of an average of 100 miles distance for each constituent whisky would give a total for the blended liquid in the bottle of over 5,000 miles! That's more 7,500 altogether - further than from here to Buenos Aires, even more well travelled than I thought!!