Keith Trusler

The first time I ordered a Bobby Burns, on a bitter January evening in Edinburgh, I expected something sweet and fussy. What arrived was neither. Blended Scotch, sweet vermouth, and a half ounce of Benedictine, stirred down with ice and strained into a coupe, with a twist of lemon peel on top. It tasted warm, […]

Mark Twain once said, “Too much of anything is bad, but too much good whiskey is barely enough.” Judging by the numbers, most of the planet agrees. Global whisky demand has kept climbing through the mid-2020s, fuelled by premium spirits, a wave of craft distilleries, and trade routes that put a bottle from Islay or

Some cocktails you make once and forget. The Blood and Sand is not one of them. It pulls off a trick most drinks cannot manage: equal parts smoky Scotch, sweet vermouth, Cherry Heering liqueur, and fresh orange juice, shaken together into something that tastes far more considered than four ingredients have any right to be.

You might be surprised to learn how much rare whisky has appreciated over the past decade. I’ve been tracking whisky as an investment for years, and it’s clear this spirit is no longer just something you pour at a celebration. Tight supply, steady demand, and the appeal of owning a piece of consumable history have

The Old Fashioned is the cocktail that refuses to go away, and it earns that stubbornness every time. It’s four ingredients, a glass, and some ice, but the gap between a great one and a forgettable one is wider than the recipe suggests. I’ve made a lot of these over the years, and the ones

The first time I made a Rusty Nail, I undersold it. Two ingredients, stirred over ice, no shaker drama. It felt too simple to be any good. Then I took a sip and understood why people have been ordering this drink for close to ninety years. Scotch and Drambuie, working together, land somewhere neither reaches

A Rob Roy is a Manhattan that swapped American whiskey for Scotch, and for a lot of drinkers that swap is the whole point. You keep everything comforting about the original stirred drink, but the Scotch brings smoke, malt, and a little heather underneath the sweetness of the vermouth. Three ingredients, one mixing glass, about

The old warning about not putting all your eggs in one basket applies to whisky as much as it does to stocks. I’ve watched plenty of alternative-investment fads flare up and fade, but Scotch whisky has kept quietly outperforming most of them. It’s tangible, it improves with age (literally), and the best bottles only get

You might assume a shelf of old single malts is about as safe as investments get. Sometimes it is. But the market has a habit of humbling people who treat every bottle like a savings account. Rare whisky has delivered eye-popping gains over the past decade, and it has also thrown plenty of corrections at

Most people think of whisky as something you pour, not something you hold in a portfolio. Yet casks of maturing spirit change hands every year as an alternative asset, and a good number of them end up worth far more than the liquid cost to make. If you have ever watched a bottle of Macallan