Burns night

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

Tomorrow evening, fans of whisky, poetry and sheep offal will come together to celebrate the birthday of the great Robert Burns. In the dog days of January there are few pleasures as great as demolishing a plate of haggis while trying to twist your tongue around Burns’s immortal verse. No Burns supper is complete without a few drams to raise in tribute. However, you need not feel constrained to drink your Scotch only neat or with plain water. These cocktails are intended to show the range and versatility of Scotch whisky. There’s also a gin number thrown in for good measure in case your guests prefer to raise a glass

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