The King kept out the cold with a dram of whisky when he visited a Scottish town famous for its distilleries.
With wind and rain making the summer visit to Campbeltown feel like autumn, Charles readily sipped an award-winning 25-year-old single malt by the Glen Scotia distillery.
He wore his own King Charles III tartan kilt for the visit to the town which made its fortune producing whisky which was sold around the globe and is now making a resurgence.
More than a thousand people stood behind crash barriers to see the King tour the town.
He first visited the local farmer’s market where he watched sheep being sheared, met charity and community organisations in the town hall where the distillery had a stand, and finally visited the harbour area.
Charles is known to like whisky produced using peat, which has a very distinctive flavour, and he asked Iain McAlister, master distiller and manager of Glen Scotia’s distillery in Campbeltown: “Is it a peaty one?” and was told it was not.
He watched as a double measure from the whisky, costing more than £500 a bottle, was poured, and after taking a sip said: “I’m always so amused by these people who describe these whiskys in the most amazing ways.”
On the distillery’s website the whisky is described as having “hints of vanilla oak interwoven with the subtle notes of sea spray and spicy aromatic fruits”.
Mr McAlister presented a bottle of the whisky to mark the visit and said afterwards: “It doesn’t get much better than this, having the King try our whisky.”
