TL; DR: Five years of blogging, ten years of “dramming around”! Our whisky journey started on a 2016 road trip in the US, took root once we moved to Scotland, and became this blog after a December 2019 Speyside trip. We look back at how the industry has changed since, share our thoughts on the blog, and thank the great community we’ve found along the way.

At the end of August, we celebrated another year of blogging under our belt, making it five years of blethering on this blog! Our first story was posted on the 28^th of August 2021, what feels like a lifetime ago. At that time the Covid-19 pandemic was finally becoming manageable, mostly thanks to the advent of mRNA vaccines, and we had recently bought our first flat. There were also fewer wars or genocides going on, or at least in the news. We had restarted visiting distilleries a few months earlier, in May, as restrictions were gradually lifted and visitor centres reopened. That trip the Highlands (with visits to Tomatin, Clynelish, Ord, Deanston and Tullibardine) was the subject of our first story on the blog.

Our “dramming around”, however, goes back another five years to August 2016, making it ten years! It started on a rainy day during a long road trip in the United States’ south-east. While driving from Louisville (KY) to Nashville (TN), we took a detour off Interstate 65 to stop for a tasting at Heaven Hill in Bardstown, another at Four Roses bottling facility, and a tour and tasting at Jim Beam (all within a 25-minute drive). The world was VERY different at the time: a pandemic was not on anyone’s radar (bar infectious disease epidemiologists and disease ecologists), and Chris Cornell was still alive. During that trip we realised how spirits produced with the same few ingredients can result in totally different aromas and tastes, and this was the hook that grabbed our interest.

So much so that in March 2017, we went back to Kentucky for another few tours (Maker’s Mark, Wild Turkey, Town Branch, Woodford Reserve, Evan Williams, Bulleit). And then, 10 years later, here we are!

Later in 2017, Gianluigi moved to Scotland for work, and Teresa followed in May 2018. It took a little bit of time and readjustment, but then we restarted visiting distilleries in late 2018.

The blog idea was born on the back of our first trip in Speyside, in December 2019, to celebrate Gianluigi’s birthday. It was a great but intense trip (we visited Glen Moray, Benriach, Aberlour, the Speyside Cooperage, Glenfiddich, and Strathisla), and one of the few where we relied on public transportation. Then, over a year into this… “journey” (we really don’t like this word!), we felt we had something interesting and possibly useful to write. First, we thought a description of our distillery visits would be good, because the experiences can vary massively between distilleries, type of tour/tasting, and sometimes even between different tour guides. We thought that providing some guidance beyond the short reviews on Google or Tripadvisor could help other whisky enthusiasts, curious or even casual tourists, especially now that these experiences are not cheap. Then, because Scotland is such a beautiful country, we wanted to give some suggestions on what to see/do in the area, for example a nice walk or a good café. We kept this part short, as we didn’t want to become yet another travel blog (there are at least thousands out there), and we still wanted to focus mostly on the whisky and the distillery. The idea was also to provide details of the production process of each distillery and why their whisky tastes like it does. This aspect was only marginal in our early posts, but as we became more knowledgeable, the amount of technical information we started gathering and writing substantially increased, making our posts quite long and geeky, especially compared to the first ones.

Back to more recent times, between when we started the blog and now the whisky scene changed enormously. In 2021 everything was still on the upside, boosted by the massive increase in sales during the various lockdowns. We can recall some periods when the Scotch Malt Whisky Society only had a handful of bottlings available to buy, and every bottle of interest was snapped up immediately. Investments were flying, new distilleries or production capacity expansions were the norm, and bottle prices were going up, but most were still reasonable (you could still buy a GlenDronach 18 for about £100, now the RRP has doubled). Nowadays the landscape is a bit grimmer: most distilleries are working below capacity, some are sharing staff (Laphroaig and Bowmore, Glenglassaugh and Benriach), some are mothballed (Teaninich) or producing gin (Glen Spey), and there’s growing talk among commentators about whether the industry is heading for a new “whisky loch”. The “loch” refers to the stock that accumulated in the late 1970s and 1980s, when sales failed to match the optimistic projections (and the production levels they drove). This caused a big wave of distilleries closures (or mothballing), with job losses in local communities. This story is complicated though, and we’ll save our thoughts on this for a future post, maybe.

What it is very likely, though, is that we will have less material to write about (below some stats of our “achievements”, lol), given that the pace at which new distilleries are built is slowing down. We will definitely revisit some (Arran perhaps?), try different experiences at previously visited distilleries (dying to do a Bruichladdich warehouse tasting!), move beyond Scotch (a series of blogs on European distilleries will be here soon!), and keep an eye on the odd open days for distilleries usually closed to the public. We are also thinking to restructure the blog a bit, maybe trying to keep a more regular schedule, with posts published once or twice a month regardless of the length of the story. But fear not (!), there is no shortage of topics to talk about: we live in a time with endless interesting releases, and whisky events are popping up all over the place. If you have any suggestions, feedback, topics you’d like us to talk about, or events (online tastings maybe?) you’d be interested in, we’d love to hear your thoughts (via email, Instagram or Substack…working on a Bluesky presence, but we’re not there yet).

Finally, and more importantly, since we started “dramming around”, we’ve found a fantastic community of kind and generous people, some working in the industry but many just whisky fans like us. Distillery managers or tour guides who go the extra mile to answer our nerdy questions, brand ambassadors who somehow remember us from one year to the next, members of the whisky group we’re part of who, over time, became proper friends: the whisky world can really be open and welcoming (but no worries, we’re well aware it’s not all like this). The most enriching thing is being able to share our passion with people who get it: no need to explain why we’d happily drive three hours and a half for a single distillery tour, or spend a weekend volunteering at a whisky festival. “Dramming Around” started as an excuse to visit distilleries, but over the years it became much more than that, and for that, we’re grateful.

To the years to come, slàinte!

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Dramming Around stats

Distilleries visited: 151 together (Teresa actually 153, Gianluigi 152)

Scottish distilleries visited: 117 (both)

Countries where we visited at least one distillery: 10 (USA, Scotland, Ireland, England, Wales, Australia, France, Italy, Switzerland, Netherlands…11 for Gianluigi, add Canada!)

Other boozy tours: 16 (5 breweries, 8 wineries, 3 Port houses, 1 rum distillery)

Blog stories: 77

Blog posts: 171

Pictures taken: uncountable

Good pictures taken: easily countable

Drams tried: a lot!

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