How do you start a distillery on tiny island off the coast of Scotland?

We sat down with Isle of Raasay Co-founder and Master Distiller Alasdair Day and UK Sales Manager Gregor Hunter to hear the story.

Alasdair talks us through how he got into whisky through his family history connections and how things sparked from blending to distilling.

We also talked about life on the island and what the distillery is doing for the local economy and growing the island population.

The lads also brought in some fantastic drams for us to try including Isle of Raasay newmake and the first ever peated single grain whisky to be bottled.

Enjoy!

It's our birthday and to celebrate we put on a BIG Birthday Bash last Friday night at Uno Mas.

And what a night it was!

We had 55 guests, 6 brands and 7 whiskies on the lineup. There were party games and Ali Baxter Whisky Stories Bingo.

And we even had our own cask of whisky which was rolled in and hand filled on the night in the bar.

A huge thanks to everyone for coming along and being part of the special occasion and to our brands.

Woven

InchDairnie

Holyrood

Tri-Carragh

Glengoyne

Woodrow's of Edinburgh

This is a wild one. Enjoy

We were invited along to have a look around at the Woodrow's of Edinburgh warehouse with Pals of the Pod Woody and Megan.

It's always nice to get an invited into a bonded warehouse and last night we were treated to some great drams straight from the cask.

We were also sampling some whisky which will be our next Exclusive Whisky Stories Bottling!!

Woody and Megan were great hosts and as always gave us great chat and quality drams.

Arthur has been in the whisky industry for over 20 years. He's been the buyer of Scotch Malt Whisky Society and then worked his way up to Managing Director of Royal Mile Whiskies.

There's not a cask that Arthur has bought that he doesn't remember.

He's been involved in buying and selling some incredible whiskies throughout his career.

Being part of the growth of the SMWS and Royal Mile Whiskies has made him one of the most influential people within the Scotch Whisky Industry. He was responsible for what RMW would buy and how they would sell it.

He also loves talking about the history of whisky and some of the myths that surround it. He has a YouTube Channel with Dave Broom called The Liquid Antiquarian.

There's a lot of good whisky industry chat in this one.

Enjoy!

Dougal Gordon is the Brand Ambassador to Scotland for one of the best selling brands in the world, Glenfiddich. But he's also the 6th generation of the Grant Family to work in the business.

This is an episode I've been trying to make happen, and it was worth the wait.

In this episode, we get the full family history, stories of how Glenfiddich moved into becoming the top selling single malt all over the world, building distilleries against time lines and sponsoring F1 teams.

Plus Dougal was very kind not to come along empty handed as well!

Pour a dram and enjoy this cracker!

We’ve never had a wrestler on the podcast before. 

I didn’t think there were many connections between whisky and wrestling. Until I met Sam Barbour a few weeks ago who explained that he is a sales exec for La Martiniquaise who own Glen Moray and Cutty Sark. 

We’re HUGE fans of Glen Moray on the podcast.

And have talked a lot about the distillery, the variety of different cask releases and the quality of whisky and price. 

So when we got Sam on, we thought it would be a great opportunity to talk about Cutty Sark as well as his alter wrestling ego - SBX. 

He flogs whisky through the day and wrestles in the evening.

Sam is a wrestler who takes part in special wrestling events throughout Scotland. And he’s invited us along to his up coming charity wrestling night ‘WrestleMonia!’ Which is rising money for Movember. 

Angus might even put his favourite leotard on for this one!

The fact that we can seamlessly talk about wrestling and whisky shows just how far this podcast has come over the last 100 episodes. 

Sam also brought in snacks and we got a sneak peak and taste of the soon to be released Glen Moray Forbidden Fruit Calvados Cask. 

A lot of fun recording this one.

This was the big one for us. Episode 100!

It's crazy to think that we've been doing this for so long already, but we made it to a century of podcast episodes.

Angus, Ross and I were back in Diggers in the cellar drinking drams and chatting nonsense.

We had some cracking whisky on this weeks episode which included some American Single Cask Single Malt as well as sampled of the new 2025 Ardnamerica Release.

Ross brought some goodies as well to celebrate the big occasion.

We answered listener questions as well which ranged from what whisky we would use to fight off a bear to our best and worst whisky we've had since starting the pod.

Another cracking night chatting about whisky and enjoying some good drams.

This was a cracking night.

We were joined by Pal of the Pod Fraser Souness who was taking us through a 6 dram G&M lineup.

Recorded in front of a 'live studio audience' in Diggers, we had special guest appearances from listener Launce Morgan and his 'current wife' Sandra.

Big Cameron Ewen was also in the audience with his whisky lad Ross Barr.

Drams on the night:

This week, we were back out and about and heading west! We haven't ventured too far west in the two years of the podcast, so we decided to jump on a train to Helensburgh for the Lomond and Clyde Whisky Festival.

But instead of just rocking up with a lanyard and enjoying some drams, we decided to team up with the Collector Club Competitions lads, John and Scott, to do some giveaways of our own.

So, we packed our dartboard and wheel of fortune and came up with some challenges for people to try and win some whisky!

The good news is that nothing got broken and no one got injured! This episode has a bit of everything: we recorded our first-ever podcast on the train through and back, we caught up with Glen from Whyte and Mackay who chatted about Dalmore and Fettercairn, and we got a sit-down dram with Marcos from Brave New Spirits.

A lot was going on in this episode, but it's well worth a listen and was a load of fun to record.

We were back out and about for this episode on our Ian Macleod big day out.

Not only were we given full access to the distillery and taken on our own tour with Gordon Dundas, we were also treated to The Malt Master Experience and hosted by good Pal of the Pod Jake Adcook.

Jake is part of the blending team for Ian Macleod Distillers, which means he knows a thing or two about how to blend Glengoyne.

He talked us through his processes of blending whisky while we had a go at blending our very own versions of Glengoyne.

We put our efforts to the test had to select our own favourites blind.

Who do you think would be the best Master Blender of the Whisky Stories Podcast?