23 November 2007

Black and White



It was a fine Thanksgiving, rescued from the blues by the kind invitation of a friend to share the bounty of his family table, and the antics of the next generation of taxpayers, blissfully unaware of the responsibilities we are heaping upon their childish shoulders.

Upon return, I got a note from another old pal, referencing the fine single malt Scotch that he uses as a tool to frame the celebration of the American Bounty. It got me in trouble this morning, since I have to work, and not be out in the madness of Black Friday, the signal shopping day that marks the beginning of profitability for the retail sector.

My friend's brand of choice is Dalwhinnie, fifteen-years-old. It is not that I got in trouble by tipping a finger or two into the inspired Dazbog dark-roasted Colombian coffee I brewed before dawn; that would be a crime on at least two levels. But it did remind me of the box that is giving Mom the fits, which is Scotch, too, in a way.

As the last survivors of their generation, my folks have a great deal of family material that has come to them for lack of interest by anyone else. Mom is valiently trying to organize and catalog it for the generations to come, and it is a valient and frustrating task. The extended family in America has a thousand tales, and only her voice to make sense of it all.

For example, I would very much like to travel to Mississippi to see where Great-Great Uncle fought at Raymond. Had Mom not compiled the binders of family information, I would likely never have known about the Griffin side of the clan, nor their roots in Antrim and later along the great rivers that drain America's midsection.

The patrilineal side of the family also had the happy circumstance of containing an actual Patriot of . One of the Aunts traced the line back to a private soldier of the Revolution, so she could document her daughter's eligibility for membership in the Daughters of the American Revolution, and thus the generations who migrated here are accounted for.

That is the root of Mom's problem. She has the box, and in the box are dozens of family pictures from the '20s and  '30s, hopelessly mixed up and without annotation on the back to determine who they might be.

The supposition is that they are the Clendenins, of the Patriot line, at least in part, and one of them, Uncle Jim Clendenin, is known to me through the notebooks of my Great-great grandfather, the traveling shopkeeper from Shippensburg, PA.

He was not much of a tippler, if his notes are taken at face value, though I know he enjoyed a beer now and again. I suspect Uncle Jim was. If so, he would have come by it honestly, since the Revolutionary War veteran is possibly the same individual who appears in the 1794 tax records of Philadelphia as the owner of a tavern, not far from where the grand old Wannamaker Building now stands.

I do not know how to retrieve anything of their line, the black and white of truth lost in shades of gray. My Sister carries the Clandenin surname as her middle one, in honor of the request of the last Great Aunt who actually knew them. Great That branch of the Clandenins passed without issue after Uncle Jim's generation, as far as is known to us, though the pictures might provide a clue.

The clan arrived in America around the time of the '45 Rising of the Highlanders against the King of England. I had always assumed that we were descended from the survivors of the great Celtic diaspora that followed the defeat at Culloden Field, when sheep replaced the Highland villages, and glens that once supported a hundred swords could only produce wool, which was the intent of King George.

In fact, it appears the Clendenins were bordermen, from Dumfries, and were as likely to have been in the rag-tag auxiliaries of the King as wild Highlanders. Still, it must have been a good time to leave the land, and here they came, James, Charles and John. Two of the brothers remained in Pennsylvania to establish their lines there, and Charles went on to found Charlestown, Virginia (now Charleston, WVA). 

They tried and hanged the revolutionary John Brown there, since it is the county seat nearest to Harpers Ferry. Now, the historic burgh is known for its races and slots, which drives the jurisdictions in adjoining Maryland and Virginia nuts about the loss of local revenue to the wily Mountaineers.

As a consequence, I suspect all the Clendenins enjoyed their whiskey. But as to the connection to the photos and Dalwhinnie single-malt, I have to defer to the Badenochs, whose blood I do not share, though my cousins do.

Aunt Gerry was a Badenoch, and she married my Uncle Jim, whose name was traditional in the Clendenins. The Badenoch clan, those that remain, live in the district that forms part of the Bandenoch and Strathspey Highland Council. The area is bounded on the north my the Monadhliath Mountains, on the south by Atholl and the Grampians, on the west by Lochaber, and to the east by the Cairngoms and Braemar.

They would have known the tradition that went into Dalwhinnie well, since the distillery stands in the village of the same name, near the Drumochter Pass, highest in all the United Kingdom. The name itself is Gaelic for “meeting place,” which is suitable to the way I like to observe the holiday, and characterized the village of Strathspey where herders and itinerants would lay-over before challenging the brisk winds and snows above.

The pass divides the north and south highlands, and has been the route of rogues and working soldiers since before antiquity. The distillery was located there due to the ready availability to the clear spring water from Lochan-Doire-Uaine, above the snow line. There was also fuel for the fires below the kettles from the rich bogs all around.

The world-wide whisky boom in the late 1890s brought investors from Kingussie, John Grant, George Sellar and Alexander Mackenzie by name, and they started distilling in 1897.

Whether they liked their product too well, or the times were bad, I don't  know. The company went belly-up that very year, and was put on the block for sale to A.P. Blyth, whose son rechristened the facility “Dalwhinnie.”

Disaster nearly overcame the institution in 1905, a year that Uncle James Clendenin was in his prime in the insurance business in Philadelphia. The US-owned firm of Cook & Bernheimer bought Dalwhinnnie in the first penetration of the Scottish industry. They were seeking malts to blend into a blander mixture, catering to the unsophisticated American palate.

The Yanks stayed until the Volstead Act dramatically changed American drinking habits by making it an offense to produce whiskey, though not to drink it. The schizophrenic nature of the legislation had unintended consequences in the development of criminal activity that became truly organized for the first time. Dalwhinnie returned to Scottish ownership, passing into the hands of Lord James Calder, shareholder of MacDonald Greenlees, another purveyor of blended whiskeys, and eventually to the conglomerate Distillers Co, Ltd.

Dalwhinnie was a key component of the famous Black & White blended whiskey, known for its two little Scottish Terriers on the label. The distillery went through an identity crisis after the war, when barley supplies were restricted, and struggled valiantly through the migration of tastes for spirits, which inclined toward the oblivion express of higher octane clear spirits, notably rum, gin and vodkas that can be doctored with sickly-sweet fruit juices to conceal the taste.

In 1968 there was the final indignity: on-site malting ceased at Dalwhinnie.

More sophisticated tastes were the salvation of the brand. The classic single-malt sold under the Dalwhinnie brand was first laid down in 1988, and the first fifteen-year-old casks were available for sale in 2003. Despite the renown associated with the flagship malt whiskey of the Highlands, only ten percent of the production run  is marketed as single malt.

The rest is poured in with several others, to produce Black & White.

I am pretty sure Uncle Jim Clendenin was a blended whiskey man, having lost an appreciation for the subtle tastes of the homeland in brash North America.

But I assume he is one of the festive members in some of the less formal pictures in the box that Mom has, and one key to the puzzle might be the color of the liquid in the glass he is holding. The relative tone would reflect whether it is blended whiskey, though of course the photos are all in black and white.

Copyright 2007 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

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