🥃scotch regions, by what's in the glass, not the tourism blurb

built for blind tasting guesses, not travel brochures. the five official regions plus the exceptions everyone actually argues about.

Speyside (light style)

orchard fruit, honey, barely-there smoke. Glenlivet is the textbook pour.

Speyside (sherried style)

dried fruit, Christmas cake, the sherry cask talking louder than the spirit. Macallan, Aberlour.

Highland

the region is so big the term barely means anything on its own, this is the tell not the answer.

Highland, northern

heathery, a little coastal salt creeping in.

Highland, southern / Perthshire

Lowland

grassy, light, often triple distilled. the entry point for people who think they don't like whisky.

Islay (peated)

iodine, bonfire, TCP if it's really cranked up. neat, always, ice mutes the smoke and that's the whole point of the peat.

Islay (the unpeated exception)

Bunnahabhain and Bruichladdich's core range, proof the region isn't just smoke.

Campbeltown

salty, oily, a funk some people call dunnage. down to three distilleries from thirty.

the Islands (not an official region, everyone treats it as one anyway)

Skye, Orkney, Jura. maritime, usually lighter peat than Islay, this is where (cask strength) bottlings get interesting.

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