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.

This week it's a luxury podcast.

Tim Walker has been a keen listener of the pod since the early days, and we've been trying to get him on for a long time.

Thankfully, he finally agreed. And he brought drams with him!!

Tim is the National Account Manager in Scotland for the Luxury On Trade.

What that means is that he sells very expensive whisky to people like Ross who sells it on to other people.

And speaking of Ross, it was great to have him back on the pod for this one. He was also able to give his own thoughts and insight into the wonderful world of luxury whisky.

Enjoy!

This week we have good Pal of the Pod back on for some good old whisky chat.

Where is the whisky industry right now? We reacted to the big news coming out of Diageo and tried to work out if this is good news for the consumer.

The art of blending and can we do it in the cellar at Diggers? We put Greg's consultancy skills to the test.

And a real treat with some Dram Jam sent in for us to sample.

This week we were back in the Diggers Cellar joined by Shona Gillespie aka Shona Sips from Loch Lomond Group.

We chatted about Glenscotia, re-branding, Loch Lomond's 11 different spirit types and what's going on in the Scotch Whisky Industry right now.

Shona was kind enough to bring drams and samples along with her and we really enjoyed the new Glenscotia 12 release.

This week we were recording our first ever episoed in the NEW Digger Leith which only opened a few days ago.

The first half of this episode was recorded during a power cut. But we had plenty of drams to get through, so we lit some candles, poured some drams and got chatting. This week we had really good 'Pal of the Pod' Fraser Souness on to talk us through what's happening at Gordon & Macpahil, the latest chat on the new Cairn Distillerly inaugural release AND I had brought back some Indian goodies. We tried some 'whisky cartons' which ended up with very mixed reviews as well as some proper Indian single malt from Pujl John and Indrie. Enhjoy

When Scotland got a last minute call up to the T20 Cricket World Cup in India, and I realised they'd be in Bangalore while I was here, it was too good an opportunity to pass up.

So after watching Scotland in their warm-up game against Afghanistan from outside the ground (check out the vlog) I was invited to the team hotel the next day.

You might hear from my voice in this episode that even though I didn't get into the game, we were still in fine voice.

I caught up with Charles Paterson Head of Coms and All Rounder Michael Leask in the team hotel before they headed off to kick off their World Cup campaign.

This is a great insight into cricket, what it's like scrambling to get a team together, and how whisky plays it's role.