How to drink whisky

Aside from Icelandic whale testicle beer and Korean wine made from baby mice, there are probably few drinks which the observation ‘It’s an acquired taste’ is more applicable to than whisky.

And with Burns night upon us, you can rest assured that there will be plenty of people who are already dreading the moment when the time comes to raise a glass in honour of Robert Burns, the 18th century ‘heaven-taught ploughman-poet’ whose birthday will be celebrated around the world on the night of January 25 with haggis, neeps – and, yes, whisky. Lots of whisky.

As with oysters, cigars, cold water swimming and cryptocurrency, whisky is something which many people feel they should acquaint themselves with but which they recoil from because they’ve tried it once and have either been left with the memory of a ‘bad experience’ or, in extreme cases where they have tried to like it rather too hard, no memory at all.