Meeting an old friend after a long time apart is one of life’s great pleasures. You are quickly reminded what a joy it is to be in others’ company, and the more time you spend together, the more you reveal the depth of that joy. The same is true of a favoured whisky that you haven’t had in a while. Coming back to Glen Scotia 15 was a real pleasure.

The whisky drinking community is such a friendly and generous place. It has been a huge bastion of optimism and kindness over the last ten years. It has been a great source of friendship and has presented me with some money-can’t-buy (or at least I can’t afford) whiskies. Steve at The Whisky Wire has run over a decade of online tastings, and they have all been educational, informative, and fun.

I am a huge fan of a curveball in a whisky tasting. Veering away from what people expect is important - it keeps them guessing about what might come next, but this whisky even managed to blindside me. I love Ardmore. It’s a distillery that rarely disappoints (unless you buy their standard bottlings, which are very dull), but this one is peated, and I really wasn’t prepared for just how smoky it would be.

Since his girlfriend went missing seven years ago, Michael Sleep’s life has been on hold. But a mystical recipe in an old journal promises to give the answers he’s been longing for.

Lochlea are part of the cool new gang in whisky. They haven’t been around for long, distillation only began in 2018, but they found their groove almost straight away. They produce high-quality spirit, focus on sustainability, and have mastered the art of celebrating provenance without tipping into stuffiness. This makes them a great distillery to introduce to new whisky drinkers. Their whisky dispels the myth that only age-statement releases can be good, and shows how small differences in recipe or distillation can make a big impact.

On Sunday, I organised a Burns’ Night blind whisky tasting at The Fallen Tree micropub in Clevedon. I chose six whiskies, one from each whisky-producing region in Scotland, so that we could take a six-whisky tour of the country. First up, we visited the Islands, travelling the short journey across the water from Oban, along the Sound of Mull, to Tobermory.