1. What’s an average day like for you?
Every single day is different – it might include launch parties, training in our offices, bar visits. Every four or five days I’m in a different market, so usually every couple of days I wake up in a different city. An average day does always include some exercise for me.
2. What’s the most exciting thing you’ve done together with Mortlach?
I remember so many amazing, incredible moments. From launching in a Victorian butcher’s shop in Sydney, through to really extravagant dinners in the Banyan Tree On The Bund in Shanghai, to hosting events in a castle in Canada.
3. What do you normally crave after a few sips of whisky?
Another sip of whisky.
4. If you were still working as a bartender, would you use Mortlach in any particular cocktail?
I love it in an aperitif-style cocktail. Rob Roy, Old Fashioned, I love it in a Boulevardier (I’m a sucker for Campari). Anything very simple that highlights the whisky.
5. We hear you’re training for a marathon. How do you find the time to run?
You make time. I ran the London Marathon this year and I’m doing it next year, and you make time. So I exercise usually first thing in the morning. Swimming, running, road biking, yoga, everything. With whisky, it’s all about responsible drinking. And I love food… I travel for food. I love all of that, and it’s important to balance it out.
6. Three things you bring with you when you’re on the road.
My trainers, whisky and my speakers.
7. What is currently on rotation on your Spotify/iTunes?
Honne, Julio Bashmore’s new album Knocking Boots, and a lot of Rosie Lowe.
If you weren’t a brand ambassador for Mortlach, what do you think you’d be doing?
I’d be an explorer. I did Geography [in uni] originally because I wanted to travel the world, experience different cultures and see different places. I probably would have done that, then set up my own restaurant somewhere. If I hadn’t done bartending, my life would have turned out very different.
8. Could you see yourself getting serious with someone who doesn’t drink whisky?
Yes, but most of the time I am surrounded by whisky people. That said, everyone is different; whisky is very much an acquired taste and it’s a personal thing. But from my experience, the people I have met who don’t like whisky usually love it by the end of the evening.
9. If you could have a whisky tasting with one person, dead or alive, who would it be and why?
I’d bring a couple of people together from across the world who are still alive and whom I get along with very well: Ryan Cheti, the world’s leading bartender at the moment (I used to work with him in Edinburgh); Dave Broom, whisky writer; Allison Patel, a whiskey owner based in New York; and my friend Abby, who’s a photographer. It would be the five of us, and… I’ve actually got a table booking at NOMA in Copenhagen coming up, so I would hijack that, add on another place setting, and take them through a however-many-course whisky-and-food pairing.