When one goes away on a trip, your first port of call is normally all the touristy locations. Probably not when you're in Scotland and your hubby is a whisky lover. Ok, to be fair, we didn't target this place. We saw it on the way to drop off our bags at our airbnb. I love old quaint shops and when I saw this place across the road - Cadenhead's, Scotland's oldest independent bottler established in 1842 - I suggested we drop in to browse. I would have suggested it even it if sold wellingtons, the fact it sold whisky was a bonus, for hubby especially.
True to its word, there was a lot of independent bottles in the shop window, all with the good old fashioned hand written price labels. I just love the authenticity of all this. There was also some single cask rum and world gin on display. However, I wonder if whiskies should be exposed to so much light? The shop is located on Royal Mile, the main street in the old town of Edinburgh. Although I think there is no direct sunlight, it's still a lot of direct light, plus the glass window, I wonder if that impacts the taste of the whisky. Some of the bottles were pretty expensive, like over £150!!!!
I love these quaint old shops because it's like walking into a historical archive. Everything is so dated. I mean if you look at the image below, you'd think it's some sort of film setting. They had working desks, and I mean proper good old fashion wooden desks with drawers. Even the mandatory Covid screens had wooden frames instead of flimsy plastic and blended in with the rest of the shop decor.
On the other side of the shop was a blackboard that listed all the single casks that Cadenhead's bottled.
And this cabinet housed all the bourbons and sherrys.
Apart from their own bottles, they also sold a lot of other branded whisky. They specifically said the bottles on display were dummy bottles, perhaps all the real stuff were held in the back of the store in a more secure room. I mean security wasn't at the highest level here and it would have been very easy for one to break the window to grab a few bottles..... maybe window displays are also dummy bottles?? Now that makes perfect sense.
Bearing in mind we'd literally stepped off the train into Edinburgh half an hour earlier, we weren't planning on doing any shopping yet. As hubby was browsing and chatting to the staff, he mentioned one of his favourite whisky that was quite hard to come by nowadays. The Springbank 15 years single malt. He knew they were sold out in a lot of places and asked casually if they had any in stock, expecting the standard No. To his surprise and utter delight, they said they had a few bottles that had just arrived!!! The guys in the shop were great, and agreed to hold a bottle for him to pick up a couple of days later before we leave. They didn't even need us to pay in advance or put a deposit on it. If we didn't come back for it, they would have no problem in selling it because it's in demand.
Great start to a few days away in Edinburgh, and we haven't even started our break!!!
