Ardbeg Uigeadail 54.2% Dram #30

I step out of the car - red in 1980, rusty cherry now. I had only just managed to pull it into the side of the road with the last of its momentum after noticing greasy black smoke curling out from under the bonnet.

This I now lift, carefully and cautiously. Even in my mechanical ignorance, I sense that my old Rover needs urgent care, her black blood oozing about the engine bay. Lifting my mobile to my ear, I wonder if the AA is to be found on Islay. Whatever the eventuality, I quickly decide that breaking down on South Shore, in May, with the sun kissing the sea, the verge, the road, the surrounding fields and even my old Rover - is not such a curse after all.

From where I stand on the verge, its plant life breathing vegetally, I can see a steep dune cliff swooping into the Atlantic. The scents of salt, sand and my gasping car sweep up my nostrils, reminding me of a dram I'm quite fond of. The industrial tang of the Rover blends with the blooming grass verge, turning somehow into a flower bed of malt. The tar in the road throbs as though a heart beats in its hardcore.

I sniff and I sniff - it is quite fantastic. It occurs to me to retrieve the car's service history and upon opening the glove compartment a whiff of the banana I had sequestered there the other morning makes the parallels between my local atmosphere and an expression of Ardbeg become all the more astonishing.

After another deep sniff, I dump the pack of manuals in the passenger seat. But something catches my eye through the windscreen - a man in a high-visibility jacket.

"That was quick of them," I think to myself and duck out of the proving car. However, the closer this man draws and the more the AA van which I expect to accompany him doesn't appear around the bend in the road, I begin to suspect that this person is not here to treat the car.

"You've broken down?" he asks once within calling distance.

"Yes," I reply.

"Well then," he says, walking up to me, "have some of this."

He proffers a flask from which an aroma not unlike the air I've been savouring for the past half an hour wafts.

"I work at the distillery," he says and points away down to my left. How had I missed the pagoda rooves? "I was making my commute when I saw the car. I'll be away and phone the local breakdown folk."

With that he leaves me, I holding his flask.

"Thankyou!" I shout, before taking a sip. I taste the sweetness of a charred Sherry cask, a sharp maltiness and then a rich smokiness. Little strawberries and currants make their way across my palate. I exhale - I have to - in amazement and ardour. A couple of grains of peaty malt roll about on the back of my tongue and is that tirimasu I'm getting at a quarter past eleven in the morning?

I take another sip to make certain and lean against the flank of my cunning old Rover, squinting out to sea.