Whisky isn’t so much a word as a sentence
The Edinburgh Whisky Festival — where every dram came with a great debate, and every debate started with a pour
Murrayfield smelled faintly of barley and bravado. The Edinburgh Whisky Festival had pulled in every kind of devotee: the earnest notebook scribblers, the tartan-waistcoated experts who swirl before they sip, and the ones who simply wanted a Saturday afternoon with a glass that didn’t stay empty for long.
I was there on a scouting mission for Whisky Wagon — part journalist, part wanderer, part sponge. By the second hour I’d shaken more hands than a politician and been offered more opinions than drams. Each conversation came with a story attached, or the promise of one.
Marriage on the rocks
Whisky, I was reminded, is a bit like marriage: a word, not a sentence. You start with conviction, then spend the rest of your life interpreting it — loving it, disagreeing with it, always trying to do better.
The makers — distillers, bottlers, blenders — talk about it the way philosophers talk about truth. Should we leave it another year? Try a sherry finish? Maybe it’s already perfect and we’ve just gone mad from the waiting. They love and resent it in equal measure.
At one stand, someone told me about a man called Davy. “When you visit, you have to talk to him,” they said. “He’s got a weird way with whisky. Talks to it — even when he’s sober.” Apparently the casks talk back. I haven’t met Davy yet, but I think I already understand him.
The festival was its own micro-climate of obsession. Conversations drifted like vapour: patient, circular, a little intoxicating. People compared notes, laughed at bad ideas, swapped samples as if trading secrets. You could chart the afternoon by the decibel level alone — polite curiosity at noon, theological debate by four.
Spirit level
Somewhere between the stands of Glen-this and Ard-that, I stopped pretending I was only scouting stories. I was inside one. This is what whisky does when it’s left to its natural state: it creates connection, even among strangers who can’t agree on anything except the pleasure of disagreement.
By the time I left, my notebook was full of names and my palate was long past reliable. But I’d found what I came for — reminders that whisky isn’t just a drink you taste; it’s a conversation that never really ends.
Maybe that’s what Whisky Wagon will always chase — the people who keep the conversation alive, one dram, one argument, one story at a time.