Cask & Still Issue 1

What a gig, eh! How could life get any better than the moment when you’ve taken the decision to launch a whisky magazine and it becomes clear that a lot of fieldwork will be required over the coming months if you are to make a success of editing Scotland’s newest whisky magazine.
And make no mistake, producing Cask & Still has involved a good deal of hard work, although rarely has a publishing team ever been quite so keen to get stuck in. Sometimes that has involved some epic tastings, sessions in which, after years of prevarication, I finally honed down my personal favourite malts to Glenfarclas 40 year old for (very) special occasions and Auchentoshan’s triple-distilled 12 year old for casual drams.
But more often than not it has involved many hours chatting to whisky punters plus a huge array of people within the industry to ensure that we didn’t produce what one distiller pal called ‘yet another one of those bloody boring geekfest whisky magazines’.
I’ll leave it to you to gauge whether we’ve got that balance right, but we’ve tried to stay away from the usual suspect subjects. We’ve attempted to inform without lecturing, amuse without being trite.I’d also like to say a few words of thanks to those retailers who are distributing this inaugural issue of Cask & Still to their customers. A dozen of them kindly recommended their three favourite drams in their chosen category, and then provided pithy tasting notes to inform that decision.
But above all thank you for taking the time to read. I genuinely hope that we’ve hit the mark, but whether we have or haven’t, don’t hold back, please just tell us exactly what you think – we welcome all feedback.

EDITOR Richard Bath

Cask and Still Issue 1