We're HUGE fans of Ardnamurchan on the podcast. So it made sense for us to find out the story of how it started.

Alex Bruce is the Managing Director of Ardnamurchan and Adelphi.

In this episode he talks us through how he started out at Adelphi in 2004 with nothing more than a black book of contacts, a filing cabinet, fax machine and 3 casks.

From there he grew Adelphi into a premium highly sought after Independent Bottler and then made the decision it was time to build a distillery.

This was a lot of fun and there were some amazing drams he was kind enough to bring in with him.

We met Howard a year ago up in Dornoch and when he contacted us to let us know he was coming back, we had to meet up for a couple of drams.

We managed to sneak a recording in on Saturday morning in Diggers before the Independent Whisky Festival in Leith. It was an early start, but we still managed some 'breakfast drams'.

Howard talked us through how he started out as a Whisky Importer in the U.S, the challenges of getting whisky into America, how he selects the brands he works with, and why he decided to look at Independent Distilleries and Bottlers rather than going main stream.

This is a fascinating insight and the drams were fantastic too.

The first Whisky Stories Spotlight event of 2026 was a special one!

Not only were we christening the new Diggers Leith with the first tasting in the pub, we were also getting to try a BRAND NEW Single Malt from Aberargie Distillery.

Morrison Scotch Whisky Distillers are Blenders, Bottlers and Distillers. And Good Pal of the Pod Tam Cuthbert came along to share some great drams with us and tell their story.

We enjoyed a Carn Mor Linkwood, Aberargie Inaugural Release, Old Perth and Mac-Talla.

Another cracking night with a room full of people enjoying the great drams.