The Secret Drinker reviews The Wee Bar in Inverness
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The Wee Bar is situated in a "blink and you’ll miss it" doorway halfway along the front of Prime on the River Ness. It is small, intimate, and direct and on that note I will come to the point quicker than my normal droll stroll to tell you I loved it for particular reasons.
We visited the same night that we darkened the doorstep of the Malt Room and if you read that review then you will know I was with an Italian woman who, how shall I put this, had no trouble discovering themes for discussion.
I like people like this incidentally – in fact two of my friends were said to still be talking when they fell down an uncovered manhole, that is as they fell.
Anyway, by the time we reached The Wee Bar I was quite open to the idea of a seat and a little relaxation.
The Wee Bar does not have a bar you can lean on, at least not without being extraordinarily obstructive to other customers and, worse, to Cameron who works the bar itself.
And this was when I began to feel odd, a creeping sensation wrapping itself around sensitive parts of my sensibility and drawing me to places I have ventured to before, but never actually loved. Could it be that the best way to enjoy a night out is actually to drink malts, seated, with table service, rather than consuming pints of blends washed down with kegs of ale?
This place was pushing me in all sorts of directions I did not immediately wish to go.
First it looks great and feels great to be in the place. It has perhaps the tone of an Edinburgh drawing room, but with none of the pretension that suggests, or it is what I imagine a pre-WWII bar would have been, or a private club, but without exclusion.
It is not packed and it seems to invite its own pace and in doing so it invites you to relax, to talk. I can well imagine taking a book in here.
It casts its spell, I didn’t even listen to anyone else’s conversations to find out if I disagreed with them, and then I started worrying if the barman was ever going to come over.
I need not have worried and I think that he set the tone very well: warm, friendly, helpful. I noticed a couple of people looking up impatiently and thought to myself “gin drinkers”. Sure enough, 20 seconds later, all was well when the (large) gin arrived.
So I thought, sit back, relax, don’t try to demand service – all will happen in good time and so it did. The order was a Glenfiddich 15 Solera with a Cromarty Brewing Co Ghost Town Ten Malt Porter while La Bella Principessa went for a Royal Brackla.
It arrived in moments and made you feel warm all over. THIS, I thought, is how to drink whisky! My strength of feeling on this is evidenced by the exclamation mark at the end of that sentence, the first I have ever used because it is habitually deployed by the humourless to indicate when a joke has been made (that was no joke) or those incandescent with rage to reinforce the incandescence of their rage (I was far from raging).
The bottles were left on the table, which I thought showed remarkable confidence in the clientele. Yes, the thought of necking half of it and blurting out: "measure that, then" did occur, but Cameron the barman seemed a gent and so deserved to be treated as such. Plus I am not a roaster.
It was a delight to sit back and nod, sip my whisky, sip my Porter and just relax. Perhaps this is more my issue than those who run hostelries. Perhaps I need to stop treating alcohol like an Olympic sport – but that would be to surrender to the minimum unit pricing fascists so, on that barricade, I will contest at least a few thousand more battles.
Conclusion
The Wee Bar is cosy, it is classy, and it is cool without even trying to be, which really is the only kind. If it were an album it would be Kind of Blue, if it were a car it would be a Bentley 1954 R-type – it is the sort of place that almost makes me want to wear a fedora and never again don denim.
I think I am going to have to shuffle the decks, rearrange the criteria, and move the goal posts.
The best place to sample malt whisky or whisky of any kind that I know of in the Highlands is the Malt Rooms, by far. When it comes to specialisation it is the gold standard.
But the coolest, most comfortable, and fun experience for doing the same is The Wee Bar.
Will I be back again? By the time this is published I expect to have an account. I expect to have an arrangement with the bank and I expect to have a discount card exclusive to me due to the frequency of my visits.
Give it a year and I expect to be one of those people with their own seat in a place. Yes, goodness yes, I will be back.
