It may seem arduous to take two trains and a bus from Zurich to St. Maria, an Alpine village in Val Mustair, halfway between St. Moritz and the Italian border, but consider the distances Lord Gunter Sommer travels to keep hisAirmail requires too much paperwork, so the retired sporting goods importer routinely makes the 24-hour trip in his Skoda station wagon, driving back and forth from Scotland to replenish his inventory.
"You can imagine the guards at the border," Sommer tells me over a seven-year-old single malt Bruichladdich, a private double-wood single cask bottling simultaneously aged in sherry and bourbon oak. "It looks like I have 200 kilos of hashish in the car, plus 100 liters of clear liquid in a stainless steel container.
Of course, Sommer isn't always home, so the SWBOE, named after its Guinness Book of World Records title, is open on weekends and by request. The bar can accommodate five guests on stools, thirty standing, or more when on warm summer nights crowds spill onto the cobblestone curb outside. More often however, he receives requests for private tastings from international connoisseurs, celebrities, and royalty. Those experiences may include tastes of Auchentoshan's first 12-year-old whisky, originally produced in 1966 for the cruise ship Queen Elizabeth 2, which was decommissioned in 2008."I knew the master distiller, Iain Mccallum, and I told him the deal; I'll buy their inventory but only if I can have every bottle from the ship," he says.
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Source: NPR - 🏆 96. / 63 Read more »
Source: papermagazine - 🏆 409. / 53 Read more »
Source: Food52 - 🏆 113. / 63 Read more »
Source: cnnbrk - 🏆 393. / 55 Read more »
Source: enews - 🏆 466. / 52 Read more »