Old Pulteney add celebratory spirit to Cape Wrath Reunion

Submitted by Burt Greener Communications

29th January 2010

Old Pulteney single malt whisky has helped a separated Cape Wrath couple celebrate their reunion this week with a bottle of their whisky from their Wick-based distillery.

John and Kay Ure, who run an isolated tea room in the UK mainland's most north-westerly tip, were forced to spend the festive season apart for the first time in 35 years when the 'big freeze' hit in December. Upon hearing of their predicament Scotland's most northerly distillery overcame the elements to present the reunited couple with a bottle of Old Pulteney 12 year old single malt to belatedly toast the New Year together.

The couple's ordeal began on the 19th December when Kay 'popped out' to buy a Christmas turkey, some coffee and presents on a pre-Christmas shopping trip to Inverness. Deep snow, gale force winds and sheets of ice meant the return journey was impossible and left her stranded 11 miles from home in a friend's caravan for nearly a month.

Her husband John was forced to spend Christmas, New Year and his 58th birthday separated from his wife until the ice and snow melted. The month of isolation left John with dwindling supplies of food and fuel, after his diesel generator broke down and his coal ran out. Their dogs - his only companions apart from two walkers who arrived unexpectedly at their small café on Christmas Day - were left eating army rations left behind from an earlier military training exercise.

The patient couple were finally reunited on Monday when John was able to make the 11-mile journey by car and cross the Kyle of Durness by boat to collect his wife who was waiting with the turkey.

Old Pulteney's disilltery is based in the harbour town of Wick, the most northerly distillery on the UK mainland and an area that is steeped in maritime history back to its time as a busy herring port. It's this legacy and the faint salty taste to the whisky that it's known as the Genuine Maritime Malt.