Rabbie Burns may have known the downside to drink when he wrote on a John Syme’s goblet “There’s death in the cup — sae beware!”, but he knew the draw of it too, following his alarming opening line with a touch of honesty: “But wha can avoid the fell snare? The man and his wine's sae bewitching!”
It seems only right, then, to pay tribute to Scotland’s greatest poet by raising a dram in his honour. The tie between whisky and Burns goes beyond a shared homeland; he wrote of it often, most famously in Tam O’Shanter, where he praised the bravening effects of ‘John Barleycorn’, and in Scotch Drink, where he named it as his muse.
