If you're interested, about 90% of Scottish is aged in ASBs - American Standard Barrels. Actually, to be be fair, they are mainly converted to hogsheads in Scotland (a bit bigger) buy adding a couple of staves. They come over from the US, flat packed like Ikea furniture.
Is it true that Jack Daniels supply a large proportion of the barrels to the Scottish Whiskey industry? I worked on the Chivas Brothers maturation centre expansion and the management claimed they bought all their barrels from them...
seriously we need more trees, for carbon capture (albeit with a limited time span) heating, building employment, win win get rid of the grouse shoots and moorland give me trees.
Just so long as they aren't tedious endless forests of spruce, right? Deciduous trees - that's what we need!
Almost certainly. American bourbon and Tennessee whisky legislation requires these whiskies to be aged in new oak. That makes a lot of second-hand barrels they don't know what to do with. Scottish is actually better in second-hand oak (subtler, less sweet) and seeing as the old barrels are a lot cheaper than making new ones... everyone's a winner. As JD is the major player in American whisky, it stands to reason that they would have the most barrels to fob off on someone.
line the paths with deciduous deffo. take too long to grow. i am told there aint enough getting planted to keep up with demand
it was suggested the land owners wanted wild boar and big cats as a method of getting round the right to roam laws, but if it helps get rid of the frigin stags and seeker's, what the hell.
Depends on what you want. If it's quick wood for pulp, then spruce I suppose. if it's quality wood for furniture, deciduous is surely the way to go. I planted a larch and a horse chestnut the same weekend about 11 years ago. There is more wood in the chestnut now, although the larch is taller. Trees don't take anything like as long to grow as people make out. 12 years ago the maple was a twig. It's seriously large now.
they use the trees behind me for boat masts. massive, straight as a die they come round and hand pick them. scots pine, douglas fir. and a hell of a lot of spruce.
Packham is right, as far as it goes. There is no wilderness in the UK. Anywhere. All of the landscape, to a lesser or greater extent has been shaped by human activity, including the grazing and deforestation of the highlands. As far as I'm concerned the more wilderness and the less human presence there is the better. But establishing wild theme parks in a sea of urbanisation is a parody of the real thing. You don't need to "rewild" nature, you just need to leave it alone. Forget counting trees and sheep. If you want wilderness, count human beings and 70 million on an island this size is about 65 million too many. Get rid of them and the wilding will take care of its self. Good luck with that one Chris. I wish you well but I think its going to be a bit trickier than releasing a few captive bred exotics into a fenced enclosure.
The much loved English landscape is fashioned by man. I assume the Lake District looks as it does because of the sheep. If it was "returned to the wild" it might not look as nice. Still, there is a serious lack of forest in the UK, and that is rubbish. But then: There aren't enough homes, so green spaces are being built on. Immigration outstrips home-building, so there is increasing pressure on affordable housing. Immigration is increasing because more and more people want to come, and business wants them to come. Cf foreign footballers: cheaper, bigger talent pool. It makes sense for business. So if the agenda is economic growth at all costs, you will have more and more people, less and less housing, and less and less green space, let alone wilderness. There will only be change if the mantra of growth is overturned.
70mill 65 mill to many? hmm which part of the uk has a 5mill population? i am starting to see an easy solution to all our problems.:smile:.
