Food and whisky, tasted alongside each other thoughtfully, do something remarkable: they make each other better. Understanding why that happens - and knowing a few reliable combinations to start with - opens up a genuinely enjoyable new dimension to the whisky experience. It also, as I will argue here, makes you a better host.

One of the things I love most about living in East Devon is that the county has always made things. Not always quietly. Not always for the benefit of those in authority. But with craft, independence, and a distinct sense of place. The same instinct, it turns out, is alive and well in our distilleries.

This is the second article in The Wood Series - three linked pieces exploring the deeper story of the cask in whisky. Part One, The Jerez Secret, examined the complex truth behind sherry cask maturation: how the transport casks that created the tradition disappeared in 1986 and what replaced them. Part Three will tell the history of coopering guilds and the institutions - from the Worshipful Company of Coopers in London to the toneleros of Jerez and the bourbon cooperages of

This is the third and final article in The Wood Series - three linked pieces exploring the deeper story of the cask in whisky. Part One, The Jerez Secret, examined the complex truth behind sherry cask maturation and what “sherry cask” really means on a label. Part Two, Beyond Oak, explored the science of alternative wood maturation - mizunara, chestnut, acacia, and the revolutionary STR process developed by Dr Jim Swan.

This article is the first in The Wood Series - three linked pieces exploring the deeper story of the cask. It was inspired by our earlier article, The Cooper’s Art, which argued that the barrel maker may matter more to what is in your glass than the distiller. If you have not read it, I would encourage you to do so before continuing - it sets the scene for everything that follows.

What Happened to the Surplus? The Ghost Distillery Price List A Data-Driven Companion to The Loch and the Renaissance This article is a companion to The Loch and the Renaissance - a three-part series examining the most consequential story in the history of Scotch whisky. Part One told the story of the Whisky Loch and the industry’s near-destruction of its finest asset. Part Two examined the pivot - the individuals and institutions that saw value where the mainstream could not

the third and final article in The Loch and the Renaissance - a three-part series on the most consequential and least understood story in the history of Scotch whisky. Part One told the story of the Whisky Loch: how Scotland’s overconfidence, poor forecasting, and institutional blindness to quality led to the closure of twenty distilleries in the 1980s.

Here is something I find myself saying at tastings with increasing frequency, and which I have come to believe is genuinely true: the person most responsible for what is in your glass is probably not the person whose name appears on the label. It is not the Master Distiller, however celebrated. It is not the head of production, the blender, or the brand ambassador. It is a craftsperson who almost certainly works in a different building

If any of this resonates, and you have been thinking about coming to an event but have been uncertain what to expect, let me describe what you will find. You will arrive in a small group - typically fewer than fifteen people, often fewer than ten. You will have a glass put in front of you, and water alongside it. Before any whisky is poured, there is usually a few minutes of quiet conversation or introduction, which is deliberately low-key and low-pressure. Nobody is doing a

The Family That Started a Category, and the Japanese Company That Believed in It This is the second article in The Loch and the Renaissance - a three-part series on the most consequential and least understood story in the history of Scotch whisky. Part One told the story of the Whisky Loch: how Scotland’s overconfidence, poor forecasting, and fundamental misreading of what it had produced led to the closure of twenty distilleries in the 1980s and the near-destruction of some

There is a tension in the whisky world that surfaces, sooner or later, at almost every serious tasting. Someone mentions a bottle they have been keeping. Others ask when they plan to open it. A silence follows - the kind that contains a whole argument.

This is the first article in a three-part series - The Loch and the Renaissance - which tells the most consequential and least understood story in the history of Scotch whisky.

A Guide for the Whisky-Curious Who Want to Start Right Most beginner whisky guides do the same thing: they recommend five or ten specific bottles, usually the same ones that appear in every other beginner guide, and leave you with a shopping list rather than an understanding. This article tries something different.

There is a recurring story in twentieth century economic history that Japan keeps telling, in industry after industry, and that the rest of the world keeps being surprised by.

Historical Journey- and a Practical Guide to Hosting a Tasting with a Story This article does two things at once, and I want to be upfront about that from the beginning.

Why We Don’t All Taste the Same - and Why That Is the Most Interesting Thing About a Whisky Tasting I want to begin with a scene that will be familiar to anyone who has attended a whisky tasting. Two people are sitting side by side, nosing the same glass. The whisky is a heavily peated Islay single malt - Laphroaig, perhaps, or Ardbeg. One person leans in with evident pleasure, reaching for words: smoke, seaweed, iodine, something medicinal and briny and deeply satisfyi

Here is a number that should stop you in your tracks. India consumes approximately half of all the whisky sold anywhere on earth. Not half of Scotch. Half of all whisky. By volume, India’s annual consumption dwarfs the combined output of Scotland, Ireland, Japan, and the United States. Officer’s Choice alone - a single Indian brand sells more bottles each year than any Scotch whisky produced. ¹

I want to begin with a moment at a tasting that I suspect will be familiar to many readers. Someone pours a dram, takes an immediate sip, and declares it disappointing - thin, perhaps, or oddly harsh, or simply underwhelming given what the label had promised. The glass is set down. The conversation moves on. Twenty minutes later, the glass is picked up again - and the experience is entirely different. More aromatic, more layered, more generous. The same whisky. A different t

want to begin with a confession. For the first several years of my whisky life, I thought about pairing almost entirely in terms of flavour. Match the weight. Find the shared compounds. Consider the contrast. I approached it like a clinician approaching a differential diagnosis-methodically, systematically, with a good deal of satisfaction when a combination worked and a quiet note in my mental file when it did not.

The science supports keeping it small. Five to eight guests is ideal. This is large enough to allow different pairings of conversation across the evening, but small enough that you can run a single shared tasting rather than splitting the room. If you want to mix people who know each other well with people who do not which Granovetter’s theory would actively encourage a tasting is one of the most natural and least forced ways to do it.