As Canadian’s, we are generally a melting pot of various cultures and influences. We take pride in our diversity and welcoming nature, embracing your unique culture and preferences when you immigrate to our very large footprint but small(ish) population shores and prairies.

Behind the Dramface curtain there hangs a strong and tight-knit team. They’re invested and keen and they behave in a way that makes me feel like they’re proud of what they’ve built.

Edging closer to 40 has its upsides. I’m told. “40 is the new 30”. I guess folk are living a lot longer than they used to, so this milestone figure, feared by so many, really doesn’t have to bear the self-imposed gravity of marking the average fulcrum of one’s life.

Over the course of the past 2 months we have made this journey several times - to look at houses and visit schools. We’d set off at an undignified hour, drive for 4 to 5 hours, arrive, do what we needed to do whilst there, and then return the same day - a challenging and tiring day, each and every time. Today we set off knowing that it was a one way trip.

As I was sitting in the tattoo parlour’s waiting area, it was glaringly obvious that I was old enough to be everyone’s father. The people getting tattoos and the artists themselves were all were roughly half my age.

When I visited Glenfarclas Distillery back in 2019, it was for me – and it still is today – the quintessential Speyside distillery, even if they bill themselves as a “Highland” malt.

While this is a hot whiskey on the palate, it does have flavour to match, but in my experience there are stronger whiskies out there which taste a lower ABV.

Contrary to popular belief I am not a guy who, at the mere sight of an available Ardnamurchan bottle, grapples for the credit card. I do on occasion let bottles go, stagnate, rest or fly off into the wonderfully conflicted world of auctions.

I’ve been hard on Aberlour, there’s no denying it; those beautiful glass ampules with such rich amber promise within have failed time and again to capture my excitable heart.

It’s a well-worn cliché that drinking whisky evokes, represents, even manifests the past. It can render tangible years of hard work on the part of many experts and craftspeople. It can place a drop of a much bigger whisky history and mythology in your very hands and mouth. It can also, to varying degrees, just smell and taste of ‘age’ (in the case of one 50-year-old whisky I once tried, age smelled like dust and tasted mouth-dryingly of paprika and iodine!).

What’s the 1/11th or 9.09% rule? Well Canada can be a funny place sometimes. I’d like to think we are generally straight shooters, fairly apologetic and easy going when warranted and have a reputation for our love of frozen sports. But when it comes to whisky, we are a hot mess.

On a recent podcast recording Jen, from Callander Drinks Co, mentioned she didn’t get on with Glen Garioch and I was surprised, for what of the purple-spiced deliciousness could be un-enjoyable?

Ignoring whisky isn’t really bad thing.

I often wonder how it is that we should gauge our experiences relative to the flow of time and events.

What is whisky? In the vast majority of cases, whisky is fermented and distilled from grains. Does that mean you should limit yourself to malted barley or even the snobbish single malts? For a whisky adventurer, thou shall not limit yourself to barley nor country of origin!

With an impassive nod of recognition, the anniversary of my birth registers like I’ve remembered it’s Wednesday.

It's funny how these were my exact thoughts when I got up close and personal with this indie release, only to see the same sentiment being expressed on a vPub a week or two later.

A perhaps fair criticism was directed at me recently - let someone else review Ardnamurchan on Dramface for once. How can the viewing public get a fair assessment of anything if it’s just one person bleating from the sheep dip about how amazing a distillery is. “All we ever see are 7’s and 8’s.”

If that’s not your thing, I guess there are other places in the Whiskyverse that will score a whisky based solely on the liquid in a sample or a bottle, without mention or reference to the cost of ownership. But my limited brain capacity is smaller than my whisky budget, especially right now, so I struggle to comprehend these thoughts. Thus, price is part of my whisky experience.

The year end trickles closer, hour by hour, day by day. The winter months, a panic of presents and plans, supersedes memories of a year of glowing amber and regret; of not doing enough, of doing too much, of seeing a world presented in vivid technicolour through muted glass. Melancholy tints each December, tickling the very fringes of festive fun; the ever-present gnawing torment of moving one step further along the rainbow road.

The main way most of us come across rye in whisky is in unmalted form as part of a mashbill, usually for bourbon, or American rye whiskey.

“If a body catch a body comin’ through the rye”, is how Holden Caulfield, the protagonist of J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, articulates his angst at not being able to ‘catch them all’. It isn’t exactly true to Robert Burns’ original verse, but his version matches his sentiment and suits the narrative; despite a desire to save them all, some wilfully, haphazardly or accidentally leave the rye field, only to fall from the cliff.

We enthusiasts generally have mixed emotions around awards, especially the pay-to-play type. Dramface is an enthusiast-serving site, with content generated daily by people just like you. People who, for the most part, have regular jobs not related to the spirits industry.

As is the case with every January, three things inevitably come to pass: the turning of the calendar brings more grey hair on my chin, more New Years’ resolutions, and a bombardment of predictions proclaimed by those speaking of the year to come.