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Evening Standard
Evening Standard
Douglas Blyde

Raise a dram for Gordon Motion, the man who gave three decades to whisky

Townhouse 8 at The Standard hotel is one of those places meant to feel exclusive without ever quite saying so. You take a lift requiring a key, pass through a door masquerading as a cupboard, and step into a soft-carpeted, mid-century-modern suite scented with cedarwood and dry cleaning, where a record collection sits untouched — more ornament than archive. Out on the wraparound terrace amidst manicured fatsias, a barbecue hissed into life. Sausages were tossed on. From up here, the view is mostly roofscape and scaffolding, London’s back teeth.

St Pancras Chambers loom sternly at one end, once famed for the “moving rooms” — the city’s earliest passenger lifts, where butlers waited on each landing with stems of sherry to calm the nerves of guests disembarking, unable to comprehend how they had risen without walking — while the cranes at the other end twitched like egrets in steel. But no one was here for the view. Today was about Highland Park, and about a man called Gordon Motion.

Motion stood near the record player — slightly overwhelmed, and entirely aware of the moment. He is 55, though he looked a little older in the light, and a little younger when he smiled. Twenty-seven years as Highland Park’s master whisky maker — a title he wore like an old field coat — were coming to a close. The room was waiting for him to speak.

“I started in 1998. June 1,” he said. “I think I was older than most of the casks. I definitely am now.”

“I’ve sampled hundreds of thousands of casks,” said Motion. “These nine, they just worked. Sometimes you’re not choosing so much as listening.”

He spoke like someone accustomed to silence. Unhurried. “We used nine casks for this. Six sherry-seasoned quarter casks — European oak, built for us, seasoned in Jerez — and three bourbon. I pulled it back with the bourbon. The sherry ones were, well, full-on.”

Motion was here to introducing Highland Park’s Sherry Skies — a 19-year-old whisky bottled at 48.8 per cent and priced at £265, in a run of just 1,200 bottles. It was not engineered for collectors, Motion made it clear: it was made because the casks said yes.

On the nose: poached pear, toasted oak, clove, orange peel, and the extinguished whisper of heathered peat. On the palate: caramelised orchard fruit, tannic spice, a brush of anise and bitter orange. The finish arrived slowly, a long, low note of warm wood.

“I’ve sampled hundreds of thousands of casks,” said Motion. “These nine, they just worked. Sometimes you’re not choosing so much as listening.”

He paused, as guests nosed what he called “the final flourish of the brush”. He wasn’t sentimental. But there was a kind of exhaustion in him — the good kind, the kind which comes from doing something properly, and for a long time. He had spent his working life in cold warehouses, brushing his hand across charred staves, watching for changes no one else would see. A man who listened to wood, and made a living out of knowing when it was ready to speak.

The inheritance

Gordon Motion with Marc Watson (Highland Park)

The room filled — as many PRs as whisky writers, and mixologists, plus a few old friends who knew the Motion beyond his title. The whisky did most of the talking. But then came Marc Watson. Watson, sharp-eyed beyond his heavy-rimmed glasses, slightly flushed, has been apprenticing with Gordon for six months. He’d done the courses, won the awards, and ticked the boxes at the interviews: Heriot-Watt Brewing & Distilling, Master Blender for The Famous Grouse, Icons of Whisky Distillery Manager of the Year. But none of that came up. What mattered more was that he came from the same village. His gran lived two doors down from Gordon’s dad. When he got the job, which he called “the job beyond the dream job,” Motion’s father rang Watson’s father to tell him.

“I sat next to Gordon breakfast, lunch and dinner,” said Watson. “Asked a thousand questions. He called me a Labrador puppy.”

Motion grinned in recognition and said: “I’ve got a spreadsheet. He keeps finding new bits. I don’t tell him everything.”

Watson admitted it still felt like “playing with someone else’s power tools”. But his admiration was unembarrassed. “He made something brilliant — and took care of it. And he’s taken care of me too. He’s so bloody patient.”

Motion nodded. “It’s time to hand it on,” he said. “I can happily go home now, and look forward to seeing what Marc will create.”

Then, just to me, he added: “I’m going to build another house. I want to see Scotland in the daylight. On a weekday. I’ve not really done that before.” And he began sharing photos and coordinates of restaurants he plans to visit, long lunches never before possible in a life shaped by barrels and shift rotas.

There was a Black Forest gateau on the counter. “Not your usual pairing,” someone said, echoing the text printed on the plate. “Very Gordon,” came the reply. The sausages were now half-cindered and ignored, casualties of timing, like most farewell barbecues. No one minded. The whisky was better. The sun dropped behind the cranes. The glasses were emptied and refilled. The record player stayed silent. And Gordon Motion stepped quietly into the night. He left not with a bang, but balance. A whisky. A moment. And the smoke, delicate as ever, stayed behind.

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