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I’ve been excited to try these whiskies for years. But now they’re in the glass they’re also melancholic. They’re divisions and scorn and slung mud and intemperate rage in which I have played a noisome part.
On Sunday it’ll be five years since I drove up to Scotland from Bristol to start my now-defunct blog, The Whisky Pilgrim. I wanted to share the wide world of whisky and the fierce joy I derived from it with my friends, almost none of whom were fellow drinks wonks.
I’ve done and written a lot in those five years. But the crowning moment was when Mark told me he was expanding Malt, joining forces with JJ and wanted me to join the new-formed team of writers.
Writing for Malt has been a privilege and a joy. The captive, interested audience of thousands - millions - is not something I will ever take for granted. The preparedness of my editors to give me full creative control - even to let me write a cider column - is humbling.
But in the three years since, my writing voice has changed. It’s more critical, certainly, which is all to the good. It’s more informed, more considered and - I think - far clearerand more eloquent than it once was. But it is also harder. More entrenched. Nastier.
I have invested intellectually in certain whisky ideologies. Scorn for efficiency. Perception of value. Notions of how things ought properly to be done. Terroir. I have formed, and hold, hard convictions. And I have bared my lexical teeth when they have been questioned or opposed
I don’t apologise for holding those convictions. They were long-built and they remain deeply held. But the way in which I have fought my corner on twitter and in certain of my articles on Malt has been wrong.
It was born of frustration and annoyance and of that deeply-held conviction, but it played to the gantry and attacked holders of contrary beliefs as much as it challenged those beliefs themselves. And for that I am belatedly, but genuinely, sorry. It was entirely wrong.
Returning to these two whiskies. I want to intellectually engage. I deeply, tangibly want to be caught up in the care with which they have been made. To be engrossed, with every sip, by the processes and philosophies that have so captured me over the last five years.
But honestly, wonderful as they are, they are also a visceral lighthouse to the anger, the sneering and the mud-slinging which has orbited their release and in which I have been directly culpable.
I want to really, properly champion whiskies like these. Rather than just shrieking at and belittling those who don’t.
So this is an apology to the people I directly insulted. Not for the opinions I hold or the ethoses in which I continue to believe, but for my deliberate use of a significant platform on Malt to heap scorn and incite ridicule. You know who you are, and I am genuinely sorry.
I will continue to be fascinated by, and write about, terroir and process and drinks which are made with consideration and care. I will certainly continue to highlight corners which I believe to have been cut and value I believe to have been shaved off.
But I hope that in doing so I won’t continue to indulge in direct personal attacks. And that disagreement needn’t entail an us vs them mentality on my part. I would hope that I can be better than that and am deeply sorry that on occasion in the last few years I haven’t been.
Apologies also for this solipsistic beast of a thread. As to the whiskies - they really are fascinating, engaging and profound. A reminder of why we all give a damn in the first place.
