Whisky at the South Pole – with pictures

You may have read the original blog post that sparked global interest or listened to the podcasts about two crates of whisky at the South Pole. Well, it’s been a long and difficult task for the dedicated team from the Antartic Heritage Trust, but they’ve managed to remove the crates from the ice.

But there was a surprise waiting for them. The whisky wasn’t alone…

There were three crates of whisky and two crates of what may be brandy. Here’s some pictures thanks to the New Zealand Antartic Heritage Trust.

Credit nzaht.org (click on pic for larger image)

Credit nzaht.org (click on pic for larger image)

But this doesn’t mean the end of the adventure. Ideally it needs to be kept cold now to preserve the state that it is in – if I ever get to nose it, it would be best nosed while still frozen.

Now the team on the ground say ice appears to have cracked some of the crates and formed inside them which will make the job of extracting the contents very delicate. But they do believe that there is still whisky inside as liquid can be heard when the crates are moved. The smell of whisky in the surrounding ice before excavation started also indicated full bottles of spirits were inside, butt one or more might have broken and leaked out. Then, when the team have chipped into the ice they’ve released the vapours.

But that’s probably still a little bit of time away. For now, let’s just raise a glass and praise the hard-working efforts of The Antartic Heritage Trust (there’s also a press release here) and I look forward to working with the team in the coming months.

To me, this is actually quite an emotional moment. Most people know I have a love of the explorers from days gone by and to combine that with whiskies which have origins in the 19th Century is just incredible. It’s not a thrill, it’s something beyond words. It’s a scientific discovery, a door into history.

Words are genuinely failling me at this. While the whisky has sat there, what’s happened in the world? We’ve gone to the moon, we’ve seen pictures from Mars and further afield, probes have left our solar system, we’ve learned how to communicate across the globe in seconds, we’ve banished diseases. All while the whisky waited. Al Fastier and his team deserve the highest praise.

It’s far too early to talk about replicating the whisky or anything like that (I don’t even know if the free SatNav whisky voice to download that we recorded can give you directions to the South Pole). For now, like the whisky, we wait to see what happens next. But come back over the weekend. I’m being told we may have some video footage to show you…

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