It’s been a while, hasn’t it? Well, finally, the silent season here at Road to Dram is over. If you are a returning visitor, you may notice a few changes since your last visit. And if you are new, you may just be wondering why the header says The Return Dram and The Road to Dram at the same time… what is that all about? Regardless if you are an old friend or a new one, today it is time to begin introducing The Return Dram, the next step in my whisky blog.
Before I explain where we are going, I want to say something to those of you who have been here from the beginning. Fourteen chapters. A lot of drams, a lot of notes, and — I hope — a journey that felt like one. You didn’t just read reviews. You watched someone learn to drink whisky properly, stumble through tasting notes, fall in love with many aspects of whisky (but undeniably Campbeltown more than any other), and slowly start to understand why none of it exists in isolation. Thank you for that. It mattered more than the page views ever could.
Why The Return Dram?
In my last review back in March, I announced that I had reached the end of the journey I had set out on at the start of The Road to Dram. I had never really thought about the next step. All I knew was that I did not want to stop my blog. But I needed a new mission.
I took a few weeks to think about it — a few more than I wanted, if I’m honest. Shortly after that last Mystery Malt post, I travelled to the Independent Whisky Festival in Leith. I came back with a lot of new memories and bottles, to be featured here shortly, but also a really nasty bug, which kept me from drinking for a good month.
That bug was a curse and a blessing. A curse because I couldn’t enjoy my favourite drink, but a blessing as it allowed me some much needed time to reflect.
I did not want the next step og the blog to become another collection of whisky reviews. There are plenty of sites out there that do a fantastic job, starting from Dramface and Whiskyfun. No need for another wannabe copycat. But most of all, I wanted to retain that concept of journey. The concept may sound pretentious to some, which is always the case when things are taken too seriously, but for me, it is a low-key but spot-on way to explain how our experience and taste change – slowly, without fanfare.
So here we are, a few weeks later, introducing The Return Dram. It is the second phase of Road to Dram — not a new blog, but an evolution of its predecessor. Where the original journey covered discovering what whisky is, this phase explores what a better-travelled drinker does with that knowledge. And how that new frame might change what I originally wrote. All with one underlying principle.
No whisky exists in isolation. Every bottle, experience, distillery or person is a lens to look at something larger.
The fourteen chapters aren’t going anywhere. They’re the road that got us here. What comes next is what you do when you know the road well enough to leave it.
Welcome to The Return Dram.
