Cask & Still Issue 5

As I read my colleague Blair Bowman’s paean to drinking cultures and drinking games around the world, my mind went back to those aimless days of studentry, when games of Cardinal Puff, Think While You Drink, Fuzzy Duck and Never Have I Ever were rites of passage for freshers. These days I would never countenance such a pointless waste of good whisky or beer (or the ensuing hangover) but it is good to know that we are not the only nation in the world that goes in for such foolishness.
I was also interested to read about the imbibing habit of our greatest sovereign, Queen Victoria. It seems our second longest serving monarch was quite partial to a dram or five, and revelled in those moments when life at Balmoral became a bit more liquid. The final piece in this issue that I’d heartily recommend to you is our investigation into the Wild West of gin, as we call the burgeoning sector made up of a slew of small-batch Scottish artisan gin distillers. The problem is that some gins are not in any meaningful sense Scottish, yet are energetically marketing themselves as such, leaving consumers confused and misled.
It goes without saying that we’d love to hear what you think about the magazine, so get in touch!

EDITOR Richard Bath