Ol’ Rabbie Burns may have known the downside to drink when he wrote on John Syme’s goblet “There’s death in the cup – sae beware!”, but he knew the draw of it too, following his alarming opening with an honest admission: “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 measure 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 (an admission which, you suspect, may have followed a glass too many).
