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Maybe I’m just more prone to it on account of the age group in which I find myself, but surely many of my readers can empathise with the seething washback of possible rebuttals provoked by the outburst: ‘Urghh! How can you like whisky?’

First up, and an attitude which must always be stamped down again, is the cutting and dismissive inference – entertained privately – that circumstances alone must take the blame for pairing you with this apparent dunce lacking in any sense of adventure, imagination or taste. As much as you adore whisky, and however stingingly upsetting it may be to encounter someone with a noisy aversion to it, exercise patience and remember that this is your chance to champion the single malt cause and maybe convert the heathen – I mean the unfortunate soul – in the process.

Too often have I heard grim tales from disenchanted individuals whose first and only encounter with the spirit involved a) a cheap blend b) a hyperactive environment, and c) large quantities. I can only nod in sympathy when they describe ‘the burn’, ‘the harshness’ and ‘the headache’. So how should you launch into your proselytising evangelism? How can you begin to clear the junk and grime of associated experience from the glorious edifice of possibility whisky presents?

These are questions I have been mulling over for the last few years, well aware as I am that I cannot reproduce exactly the preconditions for my own initiation into whisky’s majesty. Whisky is a personal entity, and perhaps it is best to start by asserting this very fact. You may yammer on about landscapes, history and flavours – and I do – but in all likelihood promising, calmly and confidently, that there will be a whisky out there for them if they could only overcome their shocking memories of metallic, rough and caramel-smothered brown messes, will recast all the negative debris in a new, impermanent light. There is no point in listing the makes of distilleries likely to please because they won’t remember them. There is no point in explaining the differences between a brashly young, indifferently-matured and adulterated entry-level blend and a prime single malt because it will adorn whisky with complications unnecessary for them in the here and now. Suggest a few places which, in your experience, take best care of those maybe a tad intimidated by whisky but with a genuine curiosity to try it: a favourite bar, maybe, or somewhere like the Scotch Whisky Experience. If the jarring bleat of whisky antipathy sounds in your own home, perhaps a tour of your drinks cabinet is in order, but adopt the same gentle authority and above all else, choose conservatively. Passion can be easily transmitted from master to apprentice but peat smoke and TCP are liable to erode whatever trust the latter holds in the former.

As devoted whisky drinkers, for whom a compulsion to know more was engendered together with our first auspicious sips, it can be severely tempting to lecture. However, as significant and enlightening as the innumerable facts accumulated over many years of reading and visiting are, they are for the novice to absorb along their own way, should they choose to follow it. We must exercise restraint and simply impart whisky’s true reality as a universal church, capable of embracing and thrilling all.

Perhaps the most profound and extraordinary aspect of whisky’s character is how expertly it manipulates and distinguishes precious moments. One distillery, one dram, can bridge many months and miles and can muster disparate souls together to a degree that is startling yet also immensely heartening. When I purchased the Adelphi ‘Breath of Speyside’ 16yo in September last year, I had hoped for just such a moment and, a couple of months ago, I was fortunate enough to participate in it.

If Jane and Fiona employed something akin to maternal care for the purposes of chivvying me back on my way last year, Sandy of Taste of Speyside, Dufftown, wielded more paternal power to forcibly shake me from my exhausted and deflated stupour. In both instances, the distilleries they championed today recall a bond as near to kinship as makes no difference. Glen Garioch and Mortlach respectively connote laughter, security and friendship: they are like second homes. With a bottle of the former already in the cupboard, I needed a bottle of the latter as a representative in liquid form of Sandy’s humour and generosity. Mike in the Whisky Castle, Tomintoul, poured a measure of this for me, which he was certain could only be spirit from the desired distillery. For eight months it lurked in the darkness of the sideboard but with the completion of my first year at St Andrews and the imminent departure of a very dear friend to Alabama, USA, I felt the time was right to uncork all that pent-up conviviality.

As I explained to my malt-mad counterparts, I couldn’t imagine sharing the Adelphi with any other persons. Justin, possibly the most infectiously enthusiastic and erudite individual it has ever been my good fortune to attend a whisky tasting with, had swooned upon discovering the 16yo Flora & Fauna earlier in the year and Gareth, whose whisky experience has been swelling at a considerable rate of knots and absorbs the brasher, more aggressive flavours Scotch has to offer with relish, both succombed to wide-eyed rapture upon tasting. I, too, was delirious with delight at how perfectly the dram sang of Speyside’s earthier, richer, woodier landscapes and for a time I was back in a sparkly sunny Tomintoul withstanding Mike’s woe about how hard it is to find a good whisky these days. The dram, which we all agreed matched the distinctive power of Dufftown’s first distillery, communicated a great deal more effectively than I could my feelings both for single malt whisky in general and the two gentlemen who had supped so much of it with me in particular.

‘Breath of Speyside’ 1991 16yo 57.9% cask no. 4229.

Colour – Fierce: soaked Sherry oak. Rich maple syrup.

Nose – Red fruits squashed into dusty dark earth at first, then a lot of the heady oaky ‘tang’ I associate with first-fill Sherry wood. Blackcurrant cordial. Closer to, the big, dark and powerfully sweet Sherry really leaps out. However, this whisky’s theme emerges immediately alongside this as I smell Chinese stir fry: groundnut oil and soy. Then I detect a log store: damp, bark-like and darkly aromatic. Leaf mould. Fragrance of light, leafy smoke completes this walk in the woods.

      Water conjures up a sweet meaty note straight away. This is roast leg of lamp straight out of the oven with crisp skin and running juices. Behind the meat is soft, muscular fruitiness. Rotting plums. Incredibly dense and feral. Earthily smoky and very rich maltiness suddenly emerges, with lavendar oil close behind. More breathing time pulls out toffee and nuts.

Palate – Attacking, fruit from the cask and then just cask. Serious tannic grip. Mulchy smoke and then sweeter malt steal in.

      Water rounds it out slightly, with the fruit now permitted to stand alone. The oak is tamed although there is still a dark richness that reminds me of beef stock granules.

Finish – Lovely, deep deep vanilla notes. Light and creamy citrus, too. The cask lends all the right flavours here. Meaty. Gently drying with orange pith.

      Water heightens the drying fragrance exerted by the cask: oak branches. Hot darkness comes next with blackened Sherry fruits. Creamy toffee, some green malt and then more impressions of living oak.

This is a powerful, challenging whisky which asserts the continued existence of a darker, more primeval Speyside than the one too many people now write off as light, fruity and honeyed. I can imagine the Speyside Way projecting similar aromas to this wonderful malt from the exceptional Adelphi on a wet November day. Maybe it is a conversation whisky, for I have not been amazed by it to the same degree as when I sipped it with Gareth and Justin. Of course, on the breath of this Speysider will carry the whispers of that particular night to which it bore witness, and I will prize it all the more as long as there is some of it left in the bottle to listen to.

In the evolutionary progress of the whisky blogger, the likes of John Hansell and Tim Forbes have adopted the Darwinian role in extrapolating histories, motives and likely mutations for the species. As the blogging population expands, institutions become established and competition for resources intensifies, blog-based discussions are increasingly about… blogging.

One could say, cynically, that this new self-awareness and inclination to stratify the blogosphere into the obsequious and the high-minded is little more than paranoia and sour grapes. However, I tend to think that any call to personal reflection is a positive move for it reinforces the attitude that blogging is and ought to remain a valid and efficacious platform from which to discuss whisky matters. Blogging lends so many commendable attributes to the exploration and interpretation of whisky such as immediacy, interactivity and multiple media options to accomplish something truly creative and original. In addition to this, however, I would like to attach the word ‘sustainable’, and have it stick.

In last month’s Whisky Roundtable, a potent coalition of blogging minds devised by Jason Johnstone-Yellin, Jason himself  raised the issue again of what the future held for blogging. He suggested that there were certain unscrupulous individuals, self-styled experts and those suckling at the teat of distillers’ PR companies, guilty of muddying the water for the rest of the blogosphere. Has the democratic nature of the media worked against quality control? With whisky bloggers having experienced such terrific growth in stature over the last few years largely because of committed self-publicity, where has this left blogging ethics? How can the best, and by this I mean those writers endowed with a genuine passion built for the long haul as well as proper care for the factual integrity of their content, distinguish themselves from the tech-savvy upstarts capable of grabbing all the attention in this fast-paced world?

The responses from the twelve blogging platforms were revealing and considered and I would recommend you read both them and the equally thoughtful comments posted by other readers and bloggers. For me personally, however, it provoked some soul-searching. Have I been as transparent as I could have been? The answer, regrettably, is no. The bulk of my content never was intended to be comprised of tasting notes and that, together with my small stature in the blogging community and especially in the eyes of those PR companies, has meant that the necessity for cross-examining the pros and cons of writing about all the ‘free stuff’ simply never arose. My content has not been driven by a few companies sending me oodles of booze. However, I feel I owe you further clarification on what appears on the Scotch Odyssey Blog and why.

I have received some samples. Master of Malt have sent me three: one from their Drinks by the Dram selection and two of their own independently-bottled whiskies. One of these, the Highland Park, I wasn’t keen on and said so. The other, a Caol Ila, I absolutely adored and said so. I reviewed the Glenfarclas, and the DbtD service, because it was one I intended to use myself as a budding connoisseur. However, Master of Malt in their correspondences with me have overtly stated that there is no obligation on my part to provide a good review. Had they done so, I would have consumed the whisky in private and details of it would never have made it as far as the Scotch Odyssey Blog. The only other samples to date were the Hankey Bannister range from Inver House. They didn’t light my fire at the time but proved useful in bulking out a piece on blended whisky inspired by a superlative Compass Box tasting.

Speaking of Inver House, what about that press trip late last year? Unquestionably I was flattered to be invited, but I hope my trio of write-ups express most explicitly my appreciation of the team involved comprised of the distillery managers, Cathy and Lucas, and my fellow bloggers. On the subject of the juice, I have had a bottle of Old Pulteney in my cupboard long before I knew of Inver House as a company and I fell in love with Balblair as a spirit eight months before I would be invited to visit it. Regarding my recent work experience, that was entirely financed by myself and the potential blog content was neither suggested nor restricted by anyone at the distillery or in Airdrie.

Ultimately, though, we bloggers have to watch our steps: analyse the offer on the table at any one time and evaluate how relevant and unencumbered any potential freebie will be to the platform you have put together and built up. That I have specialised perhaps makes that boundary even clearer for me and the Scotch Odyssey Blog. If it hasn’t anything to do with whisky tourism or the experience of encountering Scotland and its flavour-creating and flavour-capturing distilleries then why discuss it at all? But what of those occasional tasting notes, then; what is the deal with them?

I have already gone into some depth (and verified my views with the help of Keith Wood) on the matter of ‘sensings’ here, but I would like to add that whisky appreciation is increasingly a form of meditation and, if it is not so extravagant a claim to make, self-knowledge for me. When nosing a whisky, I venture under the skin of my world and learn more about it and my previous interactions with it on a sensory level. When these findings surprise or delight me, I want to share such discoveries.

Certain distilleries and certain places are invested with more personal significance for me and these are far more likely to be and indeed have been woven into the fabric of the blog. When an expression from one of these distilleries does receive a review, an accompanying explanation has not been fudged to justify my commenting on a whisky in preference to distillery visitor centres or tours, it is instead part and parcel of my ethos for the blog. I have been fortunate and determined enough to explore Scotch whisky in an unusual manner and to particular depth and this has instilled me with powerfully emotive ideologies and memories. It was inevitable that these should often be attached to certain brands and I am not about to apologise for this. It was the people, place, circumstances and spirit itself that wooed me, not marketing bumfph. Such experiences and the resulting preferences simply make me a passionate whisky drinker, just like all the rest of the most principled whisky blog writers and readers.

Welcome to Balblair. Come in...

There have never been more people positively inclined to pop into a Scotch whisky distillery. Interestingly and encouragingly, these people are perfectly normal and in many instances find themselves on distillery doorsteps throughout Scotland courtesy of straightforward mercurial curiosity as opposed to the single-minded manic obsession of the likes of Alfred Barnard and yours truly. Today, stillrooms and bonded warehouses constitute a viable attraction for holiday-makers in Scotland with just as much sight-seeing merit as medieval castles or the mountain scenery.

Balblair distillery, Ross-shire, is the latest Scotch whisky site exploring the possibility of taking in not just malt and yeast but tourists, too. During my week in Edderton recently, manager John MacDonald talked me through his hopes for the former maltings and the developed concepts suggest that Balblair is set to please whisky anoraks and newbies alike. The shop and cask display are standard commercial and aesthetic features, and the single cask bottle-your-own facility is certain to be popular.

The interior of the Balblair ex-floor maltings as they are now.

However, if there was one facet of the visitor experience most of the centres I dropped in on last year were enthusiastically experimenting with it was multi-media. Be it the really rather good brand films of Glenfiddich and Highland Park which whetted the visitor’s appetite ahead of the tour, or the virtual grouse ‘flight simulator’ at Glenturret which comprised the irreverent conclusion of it, marketing had prescribed lots of moving pictures to hypnotise the paying public. The plan is for Balblair’s AV garnish to be a little more subtle: a glass-panelled oblong between the central pillars will accommodate tastings and corporate meetings while chronologically-relevant images which contextualise the Balblair vintages are projected onto the walls.

With space at a premium, the completed visitor centre is sure to be a snug and intimate venue in which to browse and buy. Of course, the tourist will discover a theme emerging as they are guided through the petite, contained distillery. It is fairly ironic that although Balblair was not constructed in an era which had the needs of prospective visitors in mind, it is a perfect site in which to demonstrate the manufacture of whisky and simultaneously impress the intrinsic personality of single malts.

A 2011 report by 4-consulting showed that 1.3 million people wandered into Scotland’s whisky distilleries last year and for all that 49 of those visits were conducted by a sweaty teen on a bike that is still a significant number. Diageo has reported nearly 20% more traffic coming through the doors of their twelve visitor centres in the last two years and has renovated the Discovering Distilleries website in addition to beefing up the inventory of tour specifications. A steady 6,000 souls a year sample the delightful hospitality at Glen Garioch which prompted a £40,000 refurbishment of their visitor centre earlier this year. Distillers increasingly recognise the exponential returns possible by allying their liquid with bespoke, high-end visitor facitilites in which the experience of purchasing whiskies can be rendered more educational, entertaining and personal, and they are making the necessary investments. Little wonder, is it, when the SWA drops a figure that dwarfs the initial outlay: in 2010 Scotch whisky visitor centres pulled in £30.4 million.

Inver House have picked an extremely healthy moment for the industry in which to roll out the red carpet at Balblair. Across Scotland there are plenty of tourists to go round themselves and the 52 other visitor centres, and such is the nature of single malt whisky that they boast the unique history and distinctive flavours to lure them in on their own merit, too.

I would be very surprised if there weren’t further instalments of my five days spent a-roaming about the congeries of Balblair distillery, and undoubtedly my time there will inform all subsequent musings and interpretations on the Scotch whisky industry. However, let this post suffice to lend a flavour of my experiences ‘working’ in a real live distillery while I attempt to compartmentalise the numerous profound insights I was generously granted by the remarkable group of people who make Balblair single malt. They certainly made the experience for me.

242. 242 days had passed since I had last shimmied into a distillery. 242 days since I had inhaled the aromas of wort and wash. 242 days since I had gazed with the tenderest love upon a copper pot still. Two thirds of a year since I had been granted the opportunity to indulge my passion for malt whisky. Funnily enough, 242 days prior to the 4th of July, Balblair had featured also. Following a seven-hour and magnificently stressful train ride up to Tain during which I had spotted Dalwhinnie, Teaninich, Dalmore and Invergordon distilleries I could embark upon my first day as more than just a tourist or even privileged blogger at Balblair.

The distillery is entirely hidden from view until you have emerged beyond the cluster of houses half-way along the village of Edderton. Then, beneath the Struie hills and their skins of heather over rock, the pagoda vent and scarlet smokestack are visible. They are, from this perspective, equal in height to the Clach Biorach Pictish stone. I freewheeled into the distillery grounds; men clambered on warehouse rooves while others loitered outside the manager’s office. In here I found Graeme, who helped me find John, who was staring gloomily into the mill.

What followed was five days of informal education. I could shadow who I wanted, go where I pleased and spent most of the time in the tea room eating ginger biscuits and chatting. During the first few days the aromas were overpowering and I guzzled them up with greed. From entering the distillery complex, you detect a spicy-sweet whiff of whisky-filled Bourbon wood. I would then park up beside the millroom in a compact courtyard around which the zesty, squeaky scents of fermentation wafted. Having changed into trousers and polo shirt beside the embryonic visitor centre, I would duck between the cool, dusty malt bins to the mash tun and its heavy, warm and sweet fragrance which mingled with the countless other flavours contributed by a Plumb Center worth of pipes and a water treatment tank which could conjure up a workable approximation of what a riding school arena smells like.

Sat on the well-wron stillman's chair, it felt as though I were communing with two golden Buddhas.

The still house was a miracle of flavour-weaving. Between the wash and spirit stills the aroma was strongest: banana cheesecake, flambeed banana and vanilla. By the spirit still, all was appley and intense, until the spirit run began and then a creamier cereal note entered the picture. I spent the bulk of my time checking hydrometers, yanking open valves and turning wheels under the watchful eye of either Martin or Mike. I sampled, I dipped, I pumped and I charged. The distillery’s rhythm was an enchanting and fairly rapid one: wash left the tun room after 48 or 60 hours, passed into the wash still, left it over the course of three hours as either low wines or pot ale (which had a gorgeously heavy bakewell cake fragrance) and moved to the spirit still where there would be a 10-minute foreshot run, a two-hour spirit run and three hours of feints.

It is one thing, as I found myself marvelling to Martin and Mike, as well as Alan, John, Graeme, John and Norman, to race through a distillery over the course of an hour during a tour and glimpse a mere snapshot of each process in the whisky-making recipe. It is another to bide and watch the work of man, copper and wood and the transformation of the malt. They aren’t lying to you on your distillery tours; there are no secret switches and vessels. I simply discovered that however much you read about it and understand it in theory, only in the act of supervising whisky-creation can its reality be apprehended.

Admittedly, my time at Balblair extracted a little of the romance of making whisky. Tricky malt, a minor leak on the spirit still and the imminent advent of automation revealed a process preoccupied with yield and output. However, the cavity created in my innocent idealism was filled by infinitely precious experience. The production team know their plant, what works, what doesn’t, how to adapt and manage a wilful amalgamation of equipment on a frying summer day or a paralyzing winter night. Distilleries work, like dogs at times, but that is what they are designed to do. Without question craft and affection come into it, too, but it is a constant negotiation with a location, history and personality perfectly inclined to go its own way. Mike grimaced at the prospect of returning to work at the end of next month with the distillery having lain silent for four weeks. To him, it only makes sense when the buildings are suffused with heat and aroma: with industry. Only then is it Balblair, doing as Balblair does. That’s a whole new kind of magic.

My sincerest thanks go to Lorna Craig for setting up my week’s work experience and John MacDonald for making room and time for me. As for Alan, John Ross, Martin, Mike, Norman and Graeme: I’m still pondering how exactly I can begin to repay you all for not just putting up with me but making me feel like part of the team. When I read newspapers in future I hope to make you all proud.

The Scotch Cyclist 'working'.