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I got that little glass while touring the Oban distillery in 2018.

Tonight is Burns Night in Scotland. For those of you not familiar with Burns Night, I’ll leave you to Google for Scottish sources that can describe it much better than I can. But you’d be safe to assume that Burns Night involves food, drink, and the poet Robert Burns.

Having run low on Scotch, I went to the ABC store in Walnut Cove this morning and was surprised to find that they now carry Oban Scotch. In a way, this is unfortunate, because Oban Scotch costs three times as much as what I usually pay for quite good single-malt Scotch. But it’s Burns Night, and I bought it.

I would not have guessed that food and drink are only the second most important Scottish export to the United States. The first is listed by the Scottish government as engineering and advanced manufacturing. I have no idea what the specifics are for the engineering and manufacturing, but I’m sure it would be interesting.

Last year I came across the web site for Highland Titles. They have an interesting fund-raising scheme. For a certain donation, you get 10 square feet of land in Scotland. It’s a gimmick, of course, but it’s also a smart way of raising money for the conservation and rehabilitation of Scottish land. Lots of people who buy the 10 square feet of land visit the reserves while in Scotland to have a look at their little spot of land, so that brings in more money.

Haggis is traditional on Burns Night, but no haggis is likely be eaten in this house. (In Scotland you can get vegetarian approximations of haggis.) Instead I’m making a chicken pot pie with fake chicken, with winter vegetables on the side. There will be ale to start and Scotch to finish.


Oban, from the ferry. Ken and I toured the Oban distillery there in 2018, but we must have been so mesmerized by the distillery that we forgot to take pictures inside the distillery.



You can get one of these certificates by making a donation to Highland Titles, a conservation and restoration project.



Source: Scottish government web site

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