Traquair House Ale (1975)

Traquair House is the oldest continuously inhabited house in Scotland. It is a fortified manor with a long and proud history - after the front gates, the Bear Gates, were closed when Bonnie Prince Charlie passed through in 1745, the Earl vowed they would never be opened again until a Stuart king returned. In 1965 Peter Maxwell Stuart, the 20th Laird of Traquair, started what may be considered the first modern microbrewery when he discovered 18th century brewing equipment for the house's domestic brewery (all large houses would have once had their own domestic brewery which fell into disuse when commercial breweries were developed in the 18th century). Traquair House Ale (7.2% abv) was the first beer he produced, and the Stuart family are still making it. I first had the beer in 2003 and quite liked it. Each time I've had it since, I've liked it, though I prefer the brewery's Jacobite Ale, which is slightly stronger at 8% abv.

Traquair House in 1814

I was very pleased and excited to be given this by my son-in-law, Robert, both because of the beer's history and also because I felt that the style and strength of the beer would benefit from long aging. The beer is filtered and was bottled at Belhaven. I've tried to pin down the date, but the brewery appear to have used the same label for a long time - I suspect from the type of bottle (chunky, reusable, with signs that this is not the first label used on the bottle), and the mix of imperial and metric sizes on the label, that it was brewed in the mid 1970s.

The bottle opened with minimal carbonation, as expected from a filtered beer from the mid 70s. There was the usual hit of damp cardboard from the hops (and this has always been a firmly hopped beer - using East Kent Goldings), though when that was allowed to burn off (can take over an hour sometimes) the aroma was oats, straw, port, chocolate and wild woodland mushrooms. Chocolate is in the flavour, along with raw, bloody meat, red wine, and soft raspberries. There's a faint hop bitterness in the finish. It's a smooth and pleasant drink. Not a huge woosh of flavours, and nothing hugely exciting, but very decent, and very enjoyable, leaving pleasant lingering flavours playing around in the mouth.