LADIES and gentlemen, a toast: to bivalve molluscs and the single malt. The mollusc in question is the oyster, harvested to virtual extinction in the Dornoch Firth after unselfishly (or unwittingly) cleaning its seas for more than 8,000 years.
The single malt is Glenmorangie, the producers of which are reintroducing the squidgy shellfish into the firth, to help biodiversity in the marine habitat but also to purify the distillery’s by-products.
Glenmorangie got together with Edinburgh’s Heriot-Watt University and the Marine Conservation Society to set up the Dornoch Environmental Enhancement Project which, earlier this year, placed 300 oysters from Loch Ryan on two sites in the Dornoch Firth. The reefs will take years to establish but the wait will be well worth it. Oysters are “ecosystem engineers” that filter excess nutrients and pollutants by the gallon, and oyster reefs also provide places for other small creatures to live.
In the Dornoch Forth, the oysters will be getting into the spirit of the thing and earning their plankton as part of the distillery’s new anaerobic digestion project. A £5.2 million plant will purify up to 95 per cent of the waste water that the distillery releases into the firth. The remaining 5 per cent will be naturally cleaned by the helpful oysters.
As producers of the water of life, it is clear Glenmorangie also have an interest in the life of water and, while the tall stills of Tain take theirs from the nearby Tarlogie Springs, the distillery also feels a sense of duty towards the nearby Dornoch Firth.
Their long-term vision of “a distillery in complete harmony with its natural surroundings” certainly makes good PR. But, rather than the usual moonshine produced by that dark art, this is an approach applauded by the conservationists and university researchers more than happy to be involved in the project.
As for the oysters, we will all be in their debt once they start filtering for Scotland. So let us raise a glass of “liquid sunshine” (as George Bernard Shaw described whisky) and toast their future in the firth.
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