If you want to get David Thomson, co-founder of Annandale Distillery, started, just tell him, “You don’t make peated whisky in the south of Scotland.”

“Yes, we do!” he’ll thunder.

Then expect a wee history lesson.

“If you go to Barnard’s book, The Whisky Distilleries of the United Kingdom,” he’ll tell you, referring to Alfred Barnard’s definitive whisky guide published in 1887, “you find that all four of the distilleries that were in the south of Scotland did make peated whisky.”

“I mean,” David says of Annandale, “we live in a bog frankly, so why wouldn’t we make peated whisky? But you know that gets me to one of my sort of pet things, which is I really don’t like the kind of Lowland moniker that we get labelled with, because I don’t think it’s got very positive connotations. So I always think of ourselves as south of Scotland whisky."

In 2007, David and his wife Teresa Church took over the derelict remains of Annandale Distillery, in Dumfries and Galloway in south west Scotland.

Started in 1836 by an ex-excise officer, Annandale was taken over by Johnnie Walker in 1893, precisely because it made peated spirit.

“The peated spirit they were getting previously,” David speculates, “was coming from Islay. So into a ship of some sort, onto the Clyde coast and then presumably by train to Kilmarnock. Whereas with Annan, they could simply take it to the train station and whip it up to Kilmarnock.”

In about 1919, David continues, Johnnie Walker experienced “liquidity problems” and sold Annandale to a local farming family, the Robertsons, who made Provost Porridge Oats, and it ceased to be a distillery.

Until 2007, when David and Teresa decided they’d buy and restore the derelict distillery.

They didn’t have a background in whisky, but David was a specialist in food chemistry. And more importantly he's an expert in sensory psychology and sensory evaluation. In 1989 David and Teresa had started MMR Research Worldwide, a market research company for the food industry.

With MMR behind them, they decided to identify a whisky profile that would set Annandale apart.

"If you ask people what sort of whisky they like, you're gonna get 101 different answers. Different people like different things even within the same quite tight product category," David explains. "But although you take 300 people, there's not 300 points of view. There's probably five or six points of view. And being able to identify these is quite important."

"We were able to take expert tasters of any type of food, and we could look at the relationship between the sensory characteristics of the products and what people liked. So if you think of these different kind of liking segments, you can build a separate mathematical model for each liking segment, and then you can tell you clients how they should change the sensory characteristics of their product to make it liked more."

David and MMR applied the "algorithm", as David calls it, to whisky. And they identified a flavour profile for peated and unpeated whisky which no-one else was doing. David gave the two profiles to his long-time friend Dr Jim Swan, the so-called "Einstein of Whisky", and asked him to design two whiskies that matched the profiles.

After several iterations, Jim did just that. And in 2014 Annandale Distillery was back in production, producing its first new spirit in nearly 100 years.

Join John as he chats to David about the rebirth of Annandale Distillery, guided by sensory science and data modelling. And discover how Scottish actor James Cosmo became the inspiration and face of Annandale's Storyman blended Scotch Whisky.

Slàinte!

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Socials: @C2GWhisky | @JohnRossBeattie

Creator & producer: David Holmes

Art work & design: Jess Robertson

Music: Water of Life (Never Going Home)

Vocals: Andrea Cunningham

Guitars: John Beattie

Bass: Alasdair Vann

Drums: Alan Hamilton

Bagpipes: Calum McColl

Accordion: Gary Innes

Music & Lyrics: Andrea Cunningham & John Beattie

Recorded & mixed by Murray Collier at La Chunky Studios, Glasgow, Scotland

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Two months ago, in Episode 48 with Paul Bock and David Reid, they mentioned one of the regulars at their whisky and cheese gatherings brought along two bottles of Romanian whisky, which they agreed were “excellent”.

“Romanian whisky?” we thought. “We need to find out more.”

So we reached out to Téa Nicolae, Paul and David’s guest. And we got more than we bargained for, because among other things Téa’s a researcher working in the phenomenology of taste, with a focus on whisky and its cultural perception.

In particular, she explores how women taste and experience whisky through her companies TasteVera and Women Vitae.

“Women,” she says, “are more likely to be supertasters and have more tastebuds.”

But their taste changes during their menstrual cycle. As hormone and oestrogen levels fluctuate, Téa explains, so does a woman’s “sensitivity to bitterness, to sweetness, to spiciness, et cetera.”

The research is in its early stages, Téa, continues. But she says there's a growing body of "white papers" about individual female taste variations, much of it led by the research and writings of the Indian physician and ayurvedic practitioner Sumit Kesarkar.

And she concludes: “Taste is a full body experience. It’s not just what happens in the mouth.”

Téa’s originally from Romania.

She came to the UK to go to university when she was 18 and eventually moved to Edinburgh. As well her two consultancy companies, Téa’s a co-founder of the Scottish-Romanian Business Alliance.

Her “love affair with whisky”, as she puts it, started three years ago after reading Kesarkar's book “Single Malt Whisky”.

“It was new way for me to access different parts of myself that I wasn’t accessing before.”

“Whisky,” she says, “helps me ... because of the insights that I gain from interacting with people and understanding myself through drinking whisky... It's just about, and has always been about, just aiming to understand myself better and the world around me as well."

When pushed by John: "So whisky is a gateway to that?" Téa replies: "I would say everything is the gateway to that, if you know how to maximise it. But whisky is a very powerful gateway for me, yes."

So settle in as John explores the intersection of science, gender, and the personal soul of spirits through Téa’s story

And as for Romanian whisky?

“Very few people know Romanian whiskies exist,” Téa admits. “Even Romanians don’t know that.”

The two bottles she brought to Paul and David whisky are both produced by the Romanian drinks company Alexandrion. The first bottle was a Carpathian Single Malt.

“That was the first single malt that was released from Romania,” Téa says.

The other was JA.AR.

“Jaar actually means embers. And it points to the fact that all the whisky that they produce and bottle is matured in charred casks,” Téa explains.

These casks are usually wine casks used to make Fetească neagră, a native Romanian grape.

“It’s translated as dark maiden and it’s a very dark luscious spirit,” Téa says of the grape. “And it was fascinating for me to drink a whisky matured in that particular barrel because the characteristics it had were very different from the wine in itself. But then the flavour of the wine was quite delicately coming through it.”

Slàinte!

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Socials: @C2GWhisky | @JohnRossBeattie

Creator & producer: David Holmes

Art work & design: Jess Robertson

Music: Water of Life (Never Going Home)

Vocals: Andrea Cunningham

Guitars: John Beattie

Bass: Alasdair Vann

Drums: Alan Hamilton

Bagpipes: Calum McColl

Accordion: Gary Innes

Music & Lyrics: Andrea Cunningham & John Beattie

Recorded & mixed by Murray Collier at La Chunky Studios, Glasgow, Scotland

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There’s only one way to drink whisky properly, insists Annabel Meikle, whisky consultant and educator, and that’s on your own terms and without regard for any supposed rules.

You can have it with water, with ice, in a highball, as a cocktail, frozen, or even with green tea…

Green tea?

“When I travelled through Asia,” Annabel recalls, “people were drinking whisky with green tea, with ice and with water. And, you know, if you’re in a warm, humid climate, that’s a really pleasant way to enjoy it.”

“The most important thing,” she says, “is to drink whisky in the way you like it and what’s appropriate to the occasion.”

By her own admission, Annabel’s been “around the whisky block”. She started in the industry working behind the bar at The Vaults, the Scotch Malt Whisky Society’s original home in Leith.

“It was really by fluke. I’d been working in a delicatessen, and the guys in the deli said: ‘You must go to this place. It’s absolutely fantastic.’ And I walked into The Vaults, and there was this huge, big room with log fires and Chesterfield sofas.

“And I just thought this is my world. But they didn’t really have a job. So I said: ‘Well I can work on the bar.’ And I did a couple of shifts on the bar, and I made sandwiches for the chef who used to buy cheese from me. And that was it.”

From the Scotch Malt Whisky Society, Annabel became a global brand ambassador for Glenmorangie, a whisky that has a special place in her heart.

“My grandfather was a Glenmorangie drinker. And when my father met my mum, that was the first whisky that he drank. It was the first whisky, I hate to say it, that I dipped my finger in when I was a wee nipper.”

Many years on, and Annabel feels “very passionately about getting people to understand whisky, because there’s an awful lot of supposed rules about liking whisky; and you can only drink it in a certain way at a certain time of and day; and you generally have to be a man. There’s a lot of that, which I think you can just sweep out of the way.”

“I feel I almost have a duty to get people to understand and like whisky on their terms,” Annabel continues. “And I take it as a bit of a personal challenge to find a whisky that somebody [who says they don’t like whisky] will like, whether it’s soft and gentle or whether it’s a big smoky, peaty monster. There’s something in there for everybody.”

Join John as Annabel takes him back over her whisky journey and introduces him to three incredible whisky and food pairings:

• Clynelish and Caerphilly cheese
• Glenmorangie and really, dark 85 percent cocoa chocolate
• Ardnamurchan and Kielbasa (this one produced in Portobello by the award-winning East Coast Cured charcuterie company)

And share in a passion that sometimes transcends vocabulary, and can only be expressed in simple three letter utterance: “Mmm, mmm, mmm…”

Slàinte!

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Socials: @C2GWhisky | @JohnRossBeattie

Creator & producer: David Holmes

Art work & design: Jess Robertson

Music: Water of Life (Never Going Home)

Vocals: Andrea Cunningham

Guitars: John Beattie

Bass: Alasdair Vann

Drums: Alan Hamilton

Bagpipes: Calum McColl

Accordion: Gary Innes

Music & Lyrics: Andrea Cunningham & John Beattie

Recorded & mixed by Murray Collier at La Chunky Studios, Glasgow, Scotland

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Imagine a Scottish bar that didn’t sell Scotch whisky.

Kinda defeats the purpose, doesn’t it?

But for almost seven years that’s exactly what Jason Waddleton, founder and owner of The Haven Scots bar in Boston, couldn’t do.

“We had a real weird anomaly that people would walk in, ask for a Scotch. We couldn’t serve them, because we had a beer and wine license only for the first six years,” Jason explains. “It was brutal.”

Jason started The Haven in 2010, offering authentic Scottish cuisine, beers, and hosting Scottish events like Burns Suppers and Stonehaven Fireballs.

“Talk about being a salesman and turning a negative into a positive. I had to do that daily,” Jason continues. “I’d be like, well, we don’t have that, but we’ve got great beer. And thankfully at the time, we had the whole Williams Brothers range of beers.”

That all changed in 2017 when Jason got a liquor license. Now his “whole back wall is all single malts”. But he adds: “We eschew the bigger names.”

“We’re not an airport bar. We’re not a downtown hotel bar, where you see those big names. They’re always there, great whiskies, but we can get them anywhere. So we actually don’t even have them on the back block. And that’s not being snobby.

“It’s just that we want to have a different experience with people. We want to talk about what we’ve got. And that’s part of it, creating that experience in the dialogue, communication, and without overthinking it.”

Besides, he adds, “no one’s ever walked out because we didn’t have Macallan.”

Boston is famous for its Irish bars, and The Haven is the city’s only Scottish bar. It’s also the only Scottish bar in Massachusetts, which Jason is very proud of.

And, with 70 days to until the start of the FIFA men’s World Cup, Jason’s gearing up to be the Tartan Army’s home from home.

It’s been 28 years since Scotland last competed in the World Cup. And with two of Scotland’s three games taking place at the Gilette Stadium just 40 minutes away, thousands of Scottish fans - perhaps as many as 40 thousand, Jason surmises - are expected to travel to Boston.

And Jason can’t wait. He was in France in 1998 for Scotland’s last match at the World Cup, when they lost 3-0 to Morocco. So he knows how big a deal it is.

“When that draw came, well when we qualified in November, of course straight away I’m like, ‘Well there’s a one in 12 chance-ish of them being located in Boston.” And then the draw happened.

“I couldn’t believe it! I was just like: ‘Wow! Here we go.’

“And then they did the exact draw the next day on the Saturday to locate the specific games to the specific stadiums. And here we got two games in Boston. Crazy!”

Since then, ESPN has been in touch. Scottish radio stations have been in touch. One’s even planning to base itself at The Haven to record podcasts and programmes.

There’s even something being planned with the Scottish Football Association, which Jason can’t talk about yet.

And he’s got a tie-in with Kilwhang independent bottlers from his hometown of Stonehaven to release a private bottling of cask strength 14-year-old Dailuaine single malt.

So pour yourself a dram and tune in.

As John says: “Every whisky has a story.”

Slàinte!

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Socials: @C2GWhisky | @JohnRossBeattie

Creator & producer: David Holmes

Art work & design: Jess Robertson

Music: Water of Life (Never Going Home)

Vocals: Andrea Cunningham

Guitars: John Beattie

Bass: Alasdair Vann

Drums: Alan Hamilton

Bagpipes: Calum McColl

Accordion: Gary Innes

Music & Lyrics: Andrea Cunningham & John Beattie

Recorded & mixed by Murray Collier at La Chunky Studios, Glasgow, Scotland

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

“If you’re looking to create a whisky,” says John Moore of Stirling Whisky Company, “you need two things. You need the body to be fit and healthy. So the distillate must be good.

“And then you need to put a really good suit on it. And it’s got to be a suit that complements the whisky. And I think the GlenAllachie 15 does that perfectly.”

GlenAllachie 15 is John’s “banker”; his “go-to”; the one whisky he “would never grow tired of.”

It’s a full-bodied whisky, he says, with “complexity”, which “coupled with the Oloroso and Pedro Ximenez that they have in it, gives it a sweetness and additional notes.

“I just think it’s wonderful.”

John’s been thinking a lot about creating a whisky.

He’s trying to get a new distillery off the ground in Ardrishaig, a coastal village on Loch Gilp on the west coast of Scotland, “at the gateway to Kintyre and the gateway to Islay, the gateway to Campbeltown,” as John describes it.

All this talk of Adrishaig is enough to distract the other John - our John, you know John Beattie - from whisky chat.

“I love Adrishaig!” exclaims JB. “It’s a strange wee, run-down place nowadays. But it’s on the way to Kennacraig, on the way to Islay, on the Crinan Canal.”

“Yeah, it’s a wonderful part of the world,” John Moore responds. “I’ve been going up to that area for all of my life.”

And the two Johns are off.

They’re talking about the views: “Yeah you can look right down the loch, can’t you? See right down the loch. And I remember thinking, what’s that?” JB enthuses. “It’s Arran. It’s the island straight down the middle of the loch.”

They’re talking about the history and the standing stones: “You know the history,” exclaims JM. “I mean, it’s a beautiful, unbelievably beautiful part of the country. But the history that is immersed in the soil up there.”

“I mean,” he continues, “it goes back 10,000 years.”

And that’s the attraction. That’s why John Moore wants to start a distillery in Adrishaig. It’s the spirit of the place. It’s the legacy in every nook and cranny; in every view and vista.

And he wants to give something back; stop the decline.

So the new Adrishaig Distillery - “There used to be a distillery called Glenfyne, which closed in 1936.” - is intended to capture the spirit of the place.

“Our belief is all about place,” John tells John. “We’ve been speaking to Mark Reynier of Bruichladdich fame. And he obviously introduced this sort of really barley focused, terroir driven kind of whisky that they have down there.

“And that’s something I believe in as well.”

For someone who got into the whisky industry “purely by accident… 12 years or so ago”, John’s become a whisky evangelist.

So join the two Johns as they discuss John M’s journey from corporate finance to cask investment to distillery founder.

There are some cautionary tales along the way as John M warns about the risks of investing in casks and offers invaluable advice on how to do it safely.

And find out how he ended up with a rugby ball from Scotland’s 1984 Grand Slam match against France, which John Beattie doesn’t remember signing…

Here’s to the spirit of a place, literal and physical.

Slàinte!

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Socials: @C2GWhisky | @JohnRossBeattie

Creator & producer: David Holmes

Art work & design: Jess Robertson

Music: Water of Life (Never Going Home)

Vocals: Andrea Cunningham

Guitars: John Beattie

Bass: Alasdair Vann

Drums: Alan Hamilton

Bagpipes: Calum McColl

Accordion: Gary Innes

Music & Lyrics: Andrea Cunningham & John Beattie

Recorded & mixed by Murray Collier at La Chunky Studios, Glasgow, Scotland

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

“There’s no scientific reason that a blend should be inferior to a single malt,” insists Alasdair Stevenson of blending house Turntable Spirits. “In ways you could argue the opposite in terms of flexibility and the creative opportunities that blending gives you. It’s really all down to the strategy of the blender.”

Go back 150 years or so to when blending started, Ally argues, and “it was about consistency, quality and flavour combination.”

“I mean, if you take it into the world of wine or cooking, you would think about combining different components, different ingredients, different elements in some way to try and create something that is more than any one of the components.”

That’s why Ally says he and his brother Gordon started Turntable: “To change the way people think about blended whisky. The idea was to turn the table, flip the record, do something different.”

“We both grew up in the world of whisky in some way,” Ally explains. “Our dad Graham, he worked in the industry for 30 years or so. So it was always in us to an extent, and we both joined the industry quite young.”

Out of uni Ally joined BenRiach Distillery, which was then owned by legendary Master Blender Billy Walker and two South African partners.

Billy, he says, “was a great mentor; great person to learn from.” And when Billy sold BenRiach and acquired GlenAllachie from Pernod Ricard, Ally went with him.

“I worked with Billy on the wood management and getting a better understanding of the blending and the strategy on that side of things. But,” he continues, Gordon and I, we’d always wanted to work together… wanted to start our own journey.

“We both had this shared frustration in some ways that all around the whisky world it felt like people had this perception of blends being inferior in quality to single malt. Obviously we didn’t agree.

“So we almost thought when we were starting Turntable, can we try to combine how we see the best of the two categories? Can we go to the original idea of a blending house and the opportunity for creativity, for flavour combination but then combine that with the care to detail that you would usually find in the single malt category today?

“Basically everything we do is small batch blended whisky, natural colour, unchilled filtered, at least 46%. And we try to really differentiate ourselves by focusing on transparency as well. So really drilling into the breakdown as to what is going into the blends, what percentage, what distillery, what cast type.”

Turntable was launched in 2023. But the Stevensons had been acquiring casks from across Scotland since 2019.

Today they own about 1,300 casks “that could be anything from new make spirit through until 40 years old”.

Join John as he and Ally celebrate "the beauty of the blend"; and learn how the Stevenson brothers are collaborating with “New World” distillers like Starward in Australia to produce international blended whiskies in Germany.

Slàinte!

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Socials: @C2GWhisky | @JohnRossBeattie

Creator & producer: David Holmes

Art work & design: Jess Robertson

Music: Water of Life (Never Going Home)

Vocals: Andrea Cunningham

Guitars: John Beattie

Bass: Alasdair Vann

Drums: Alan Hamilton

Bagpipes: Calum McColl

Accordion: Gary Innes

Music & Lyrics: Andrea Cunningham & John Beattie

Recorded & mixed by Murray Collier at La Chunky Studios, Glasgow, Scotland

Special thanks: The Piper Whisky Bar, 57 Cochrane Street, Glasgow, Scotland

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

How do you take your oysters?

Yes oysters.

Straight up? A splash of Tabasco? Or a couple of drops of whisky?

Yes. Whisky!

“I’d always have oysters with whisky rather than Tabasco,” Scottish food writer, broadcaster and 2022 UK MasterChef finalist Sarah Rankin tells John Beattie in this the 50th episode of Cask to Glass.

“I love oysters and Cumbrae oysters are the best oysters there are,” she says. “A couple of drops of Tabasco brings out the sweetness, kind of opens up your tastebuds.”

But Sarah continues, “Switch out the Tabasco for two or three drops of Laphroaig 10, because that’s got that lovely seaweed back note. It’s got a little bit of oiliness because they are quite rich, and your mind will be blown with that instead of Tabasco.

“I would always have them now with whisky rather than with Tabasco. That would be my choice… It works so well with the briny, sort of slightly medicinal hit that you get from it with the liquor that’s, you know, from the oyster.

“It’s knockout!”

Yes. We agree! It’s knockout.

And full disclosure, this episode had us salivating from start to finish. Sarah even had John waxing lyrical about seasonal Scottish Brussel sprouts by the end.

You could say he was eating out of her hand.

After pairing whisky and cheese in Episode 48 with Paul Bock and David Reid, what better way to celebrate the heritage and flavour of Scotland’s national drink and the world’s favourite spirit than pairing it with Scotland’s great cuisine.

And who better than Sarah, author of two great Scottish cookbooks: Kith: Scottish Seasonal Food for Family and Friends (Birlinn, 2024) and Feast: Recipes that Bring Joy (Birlinn, 2025)?

“Whisky has actually always been one of my things, long before it was legal for it to be one of my things,” Sarah confesses. “It was my teenage tipple of choice.”

It soon became Sarah’s USP.

“When I was quite young,” she continues, “I worked as a tour guide, and I used to take tour groups all around Scotland. And I realised quite early on that I was considerably younger than everyone else. So I needed to have something that made me a little bit different.

“So, I thought, well, I know a wee bit about whisky…”

And that was Sarah’s entre into whisky and food.

Today, post-MasterChef, Sarah Rankin is one of Scotland’s best-known foodies and a regular contributor on food and cooking for the BBC.

So tune in as Sarah takes John on a culinary journey that pairs whisky with Scotland’s finest produce, from venison and salmon to chocolate and ice cream.

Whether you’re cooking with whisky or matching it with dishes, there’s plenty to learn.

So raise a glass to great whisky and great food…

Slàinte!

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Socials: @C2GWhisky | @JohnRossBeattie

Creator & producer: David Holmes

Art work & design: Jess Robertson

Music: Water of Life (Never Going Home)

Vocals: Andrea Cunningham

Guitars: John Beattie

Bass: Alasdair Vann

Drums: Alan Hamilton

Bagpipes: Calum McColl

Accordion: Gary Innes

Music & Lyrics: Andrea Cunningham & John Beattie

Recorded & mixed by Murray Collier at La Chunky Studios, Glasgow, Scotland

Special thanks: The Piper Whisky Bar, 57 Cochrane Street, Glasgow, Scotland

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

“My palate has seen a lot of action,” confesses Fraser Campbell, whisky educator, brand consultant, drinks strategist. “I started off working in pubs in Speyside when I was 18. And that was pretty much it.”

Twenty seven years later Fraser is now the host and creator of Whisky Bytes, producing “snackable knowledge whisky videos”. His latest venture is One for the Road, a luxury chauffeur-driven tour and whisky tasting service, which launched earlier this year.

But as an 18-year-old pouring drams in a local pub in Forres in north east Scotland, Fraser says he learnt “the hard way not to pour water for the customer.”

“The first time I poured a whisky for someone, I added their water and drowned it and I had to duck.”

Despite an inauspicious start, Fraser “stuck with bars” as he puts he.

After five years in Australia, where “I fell back in love with Scottish whisky”, and two to three years in Spain, Fraser was offered a job as the global ambassador for Dewar’s Blended Scotch.

Whisky wasn’t on his horizon, but he explains, “When someone says to you, ‘Would you like to travel the world and talk about whisky for a living?’, well it takes you about ten seconds to make your mind up.”

“The thing that really drew me to Dewar’s was the story of Tommy Dewar, who was the son of the original founder John Dewar, who had the shop in Perth back in 1846. And Tommy was a pioneer in advertising, marketing, and kind of the first brand marketer in a lot of ways.

“He invented the first ever advert for a brand, just a few years after a cinematography was invented. There was a black and white movie based on an advert, which was a painting of these three ghosts coming out of a painting to grab a bottle of Dewar’s.

“So they turned that into a live action advert. So he was well ahead of his time. So that's kind of really what landed it for me.”

“I've always had a bit of an entrepreneurial spirit with a lot of things as well,” Fraser continues. “And I think the chance with Dewar’s came at a time when the brand was going through a lot of changes, going from what was perceived as an old man's blended Scotch whisky to a more progressive whisky for younger audiences.

“So it wasn't just the whisky, it was the idea to come in and be part of a change or a pivotal change in that history of that brand,” he concludes.

Join John as he discovers how Fraser went from rookie teenager to whisky polymath.

Listen in as they discuss whisky and regionality. (“It’s bonkers,” Fraser tells John, to suggest that “one massive 10,000 square mile region could produce one style and flavour” of whisky.)

Find out how the colour of whisky packaging can affect our perception of a whisky and how it will taste.

And enjoy a rambling conversation that wanders where it wants, reviving memories of scenic beauty and recalling experiences that can never be repeated.

After all Fraser says, "Whisky is a lot like music and a lot like food. It's about the occasion and who you're with and what you're doing."

Slàinte!

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Socials: @C2GWhisky | @JohnRossBeattie

Creator & producer: David Holmes

Art work & design: Jess Robertson

Music: Water of Life (Never Going Home)

Vocals: Andrea Cunningham

Guitars: John Beattie

Bass: Alasdair Vann

Drums: Alan Hamilton

Bagpipes: Calum McColl

Accordion: Gary Innes

Music & Lyrics: Andrea Cunningham & John Beattie

Recorded & mixed by Murray Collier at La Chunky Studios, Glasgow, Scotland

Special thanks: The Piper Whisky Bar, 57 Cochrane Street, Glasgow, Scotland

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Whisky and cheese?

It’s a simple question really: Do they pair well together?

Does a Gorgonzola go well with a smoky Bowmore? Or is it better with a sherry-flavoured Speyside? Say a Glenfarclas or a Tamdhu?

And what should you have with Gruyère?

Since lockdown, photographer Paul Bock and a brand marketer David Reid have been holding regular whisky and cheese soirees at Paul’s studio in Edinburgh.

Up to 70 guests at times. Some are in the industry. Some are just friends. And some don’t even like whisky.

“We invite people to come along, bring a bottle and bring a cheese,” David explains. “All the whisky goes on one table, and all the cheese goes on another.

“We don’t stipulate what kind of whisky it should be. It can be anything, but we try to get people to bring things that are a bit unusual.”

So nothing you’d find in major supermarket.

And then, once “you’ve put your bottle down, you’ve put your cheese down,” David continues, “it’s just a bit of a free for all.”

“It’s really about friendship and meeting new people, and I guess just experimenting and finding out, you know, does gorgonzola go with a Bowmore or does a hard salty cheese go better with a lighter fruitier whisky?

“It’s about people just finding out what works for them and chatting with each other and finding out what others think.”

“We’ve had whiskies,” Paul picks up, “from all over the world. Obviously Japan, Wales. We had some English whiskies recently. And Irish… quite a lot of Irish.”

“We’ve got a very committed attendee,” David adds, “who’s passionate about whisky and she’s also passionate about her home country which is Romania. So she’s now brought two different types of Romanian whisky which is, I must say, excellent.

“It’s called Carpathian Single Malt. And that goes beautifully with, I can’t remember exactly which cheese it goes best with, but I think it was maybe Brie.”

“It wouldn’t have occurred to many people to have cheese [with whisky],” Paul admits. “It’s often chocolate people think of with whisky. But people think, ‘Actually, let’s give it a go.’ And they’re often pleasantly surprised how well it does go.”

Join John as he explores what whiskies go with what cheeses.

Find out if they contrast or complement each other.

And pick up a few pointers from Paul and David, who, by their own admission, aren’t whisky or cheese experts, but who love the subtle combinations of taste and texture which only whisky and cheese can bring out.

Slàinte!

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Socials: @C2GWhisky | @JohnRossBeattie

Creator & producer: David Holmes

Art work & design: Jess Robertson

Music: Water of Life (Never Going Home)

Vocals: Andrea Cunningham

Guitars: John Beattie

Bass: Alasdair Vann

Drums: Alan Hamilton

Bagpipes: Calum McColl

Accordion: Gary Innes

Music & Lyrics: Andrea Cunningham & John Beattie

Recorded & mixed by Murray Collier at La Chunky Studios, Glasgow, Scotland

Special thanks: The Piper Whisky Bar, 57 Cochrane Street, Glasgow, Scotland

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

“We’re going through a period of short-term volatility,” admits Mark Kent, CEO of the Scotch Whisky Association.

“Volatility which,” he says, “is partly to do with international trade conditions; partly to do with the domestic situation we find ourselves in.

“And you’ll know that we’ve had 17 percent duty increases; increases in energy costs, general costs of doing business at home, which is really acting as a brake on the industry.

“And then we’ve got tariffs and the US.”

A week ago HMRC, the UK’s tax agency, published the UK’s export statistics for 2025, including whisky which is the UK’s biggest food and drink export product.

“What these figures show,” Mark continues, “is we’re just under one percent down in terms of value across the world last year. And in terms of volume, we’re just over four percent down.”

That doesn’t sound too bad…

But, Mark cautions, “the big thing which sticks out is that since tariffs came into forces in the US, we’re 15 percent down in terms of volume that shipped to the US.”

Things may not have “fallen off a cliff”, as Mark puts it. “But at the moment,” he acknowledges, “we’re going through very choppy seas.”

“You just have to read the papers to see news about job losses, cutbacks in production, maltings which are closing. This is real stuff and this is affecting the Scottish economy and rural communities in particular.

“When I go and meet with farmers, they say: ‘What’s happening with India? What’s happening with the US? Because we’re getting less orders through for the malting barley…’ for example.

“And then you look right through the production chain to the hospitality industry. Hospitality is being hit. Tourism is being hit.”

So what does Mark make of report in the Scotsman newspaper that “almost one in five of all Scotland’s distilleries is in financial distress”?

“I read that; and I can quite believe that anecdotally, because when we speak to our members, they are very concerned and there are real issues.”

And these issues – or “headwinds” as Mark describes them – impact the entire supply chain.

Join John as he explores the state of the Scotch whisky industry with the man at the helm of its trade association.

Find out who’s most at risk.

Discover what Government interventions Mark believes will most help the sector.

And find out why, despite all his concerns, Mark is "still very confident about the long-term potential of the industry."

“I was having a discussion with somebody,” Mark concludes, “and I said, ‘I’m not an optimist. I’m not a pessimist. I’m a realist. And think that’s what we have to be. And we have to say things they are.

“I go back to how we started this. Long term, the potential is still there. We’ve got a great industry. It’s not going to go away. We’re going to see markets continue to grow.

“What we have to do is ensure that we have the support necessary to get to that longer term potential.”

Slàinte!

-------

Socials: @C2GWhisky | @JohnRossBeattie

Creator & producer: David Holmes

Art work & design: Jess Robertson

Music: Water of Life (Never Going Home)

Vocals: Andrea Cunningham

Guitars: John Beattie

Bass: Alasdair Vann

Drums: Alan Hamilton

Bagpipes: Calum McColl

Accordion: Gary Innes

Music & Lyrics: Andrea Cunningham & John Beattie

Recorded & mixed by Murray Collier at La Chunky Studios, Glasgow, Scotland

Special thanks: The Piper Whisky Bar, 57 Cochrane Street, Glasgow, Scotland

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.