Burns Night always feels like a particularly well-timed celebration. Hot on the heels of ‘Blue Monday’ – supposedly the most miserable day of the year – it’s certainly nice to have a reason to get merry. It also happens to be the perfect refutation to those killjoys determined to make Dry January the new Lent.
‘O thou, my muse! guid auld Scotch drink!’ So wrote Robert Burns in the winter of 1785 in his ode ‘Scotch Drink’. The Scottish bard’s love of the stuff is no surprise and no Burns Night celebration is complete without a few drams. Terroir matters – from peaty Islay to spicy Speyside malts; sweeter Highland to softer Lowland varieties – and so it is worth allowing yourself to roam geographically and to enjoy a range of categories: not just single malt, but blended malt, single grain and premium blends.
What follows is a mixture of established players and new starters.
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