Book Excerpt: Our whisky stories

How Vic (a whisky legend) fell in love with the dram

For those new here, a bit of context:

Together with the legendary Vic Cameron, I’m working on a book about Scotch whisky. It’s equal parts travelogue, science, history, and adventure.

So far, our research has consisted of driving around Scotland’s whisky regions, chatting with people who have hands in all parts of the making process (from barley farmers to master blenders), sipping incredible drams, and chatting a lot.

Vic is a seasoned whisky expert with more than 30 years in the industry, and I’m his mentee—still rather new to the whisky world and following him around like duckling.

I started Whisky Scholar as a place to write about what I’m learning along the way, and paid subscribers are helping to fund travel and research that’ll bring the book to life.

We’ve decided to share here a few excerpts from the book as we go, and here’s the first.

The following excerpt is in the (still raw!) introduction of the book as we set the stage for our adventure across Scotland.

This conversation took place in Vic’s car as we drove from Edinburgh to Lindores Abbey in Firth. And my memories, well, those took some courage to get on the page!

We hope you enjoy.

Our whisky origin stories