Conversations

Murdo Mackenzie has been distilling at Benromach since 2016, and in 2025 he took over as Distillery Manager from Keith Cruikshank, who ran the place from 1998. It’s a role that comes with an unusual kind of weight: almost everything he decides today — how the mash is handled, the exact point the stills are … Read more

Olaf Meier has one of the coolest jobs in the whisky world: deciding, glass by glass, what an entire global membership gets to drink next. As Chairman of the Scotch Malt Whisky Society’s Tasting Panel, the German-born storyteller has tasted many thousands of casks and written thousands of tasting notes over more than two decades … Read more

Mitch Bechard has spent the better part of two decades convincing people to fall in love with whisky — first as a Diageo ambassador working golf clubs and global markets, then repping William Grant & Sons brands in the US, and now from his own base in Speyside, where he runs CopperCairn, a bespoke whisky … Read more

If you know South African whisky at all, you know Dullstroom, and if you know Dullstroom, you know Wild About Whisky. What started in 2005 as a wine bar in Auldstone House has become one of the country’s true whisky destinations — a place where, on a good Saturday, a group might sit down for … Read more

Some people build businesses. Others build communities. Over the past decade, Marc Pendlebury has quietly managed to do both. As the founder of WhiskyBrother, Marc has helped transform what began as a specialist whisky retailer into one of South Africa’s most influential voices in whisky. Along the way there have been independent bottlings, whisky festivals, … Read more