NO DOGMA ALLOWED

According to Ian Palmer, the floor of his sample room is strewn with shredded dogma – and such is the distiller’s aversion to beliefs held with unquestioned certainty that what I think is a metaphor could well be fact. After all, with more than four decades’ experience in the whisky industry, Ian has come across plenty of the ‘done thing’ – so much so that his latest venture, InchDairnie Distillery in Fife, is a business set on doing the opposite.

Make no mistake, though; InchDairnie is indeed a business, and one built on a centuries-old model once commonplace in the Scotch industry. Set up to supply blenders with new-make spirit, the distillery uses the profits from this enterprise to lay down stock under its own name. And, of course, despite what Ian refers to as his “healthy hatred” of dogma, as