“It was like a revelation,” Dave Alcock recalls the moment he really got into whisky.

The retired sports psychologist and self-styled “whisky dramalista” had always “liked a drop”. But then one Christmas, after he’d “prepped the veg”, he unwrapped the present his wife had bought for him.

It was a bottle of Port Ellen third edition.

“I could feel it in my toes when I sipped it,” he tells John in this episode. “It was just something else. I didn’t know whether to sniff it or drink some more.”

A passion was ignited.

And today some 20 years on, Dave now has more than 200 bottles in his “downstairs collection” – from “sherried drams” to Islays; to bourbons and Irish and Japanese whiskies.

For him whisky’s about friendship, connection, grounding, sharing, and being around other passionate people.

Listen in as he and John talk about the psychology of whisky; whisky and memory; the power of passion; the price and value of whisky; the application of performance techniques to the role of whisky ambassadors; and why Dave spoilt himself with a Glen Grant 1958.

Slàinte!

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Socials:

@C2GWhisky

@JohnRossBeattie

Creator & producer: David Holmes

Art work & design: Jess Robertson

Music: Water of Life (Never Going Home)

Vocals: Andrea Cunningham

Guitars: John Beattie

Bass: Alasdair Vann

Drums: Alan Hamilton

Bagpipes: Calum McColl

Accordion: Gary Innes

Music & Lyrics: Andrea Cunningham & John Beattie

Recorded & mixed by Murray Collier at La Chunky Studios, Glasgow, Scotland

Special thanks: The Piper Whisky Bar, 57 Cochrane Street, Glasgow, Scotland

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