Food & Drink

Whisky is usually a drink of the present. You open it. You pour. You share a moment. You might talk about where it came from, but rarely where it’s going. The House of Hazelwood is inviting us to do something very different: to imagine whisky not for ourselves, but for those we’ll never meet.

Something very exciting is on the horizon - an exceptionally rare bottle of whisky being released by The House of Hazelwood. I’ll be publishing more about it soon, but first, I wanted to provide some background to show just how important the Girvan distillery is to the brand. Girvan is not just a grain distillery - it’s the silent powerhouse behind the remarkable whiskies in the House of Hazelwood collection. As you’ll see in my next article, their latest expression reaches deep into Girvan's past and looks far into the future.

Halfway inland in the very heart of Italy is the provincial city of Bologna, the capital of Emilia-Romagna region. Here it’s possible to experience the real Italian art of living well. For Bologna is called three things: la Dotta (the Learned), for the oldest university in the Western world founded in 1088, transferred from Ravenna’s ancient school of Roman law; la Grassa (the Fat), considered the home of Italian gastronomy with its cuisine of tortellini, lasagne and tagliatelle al ragù and thirdly la Rossa (the Red), for its exquisite terracotta-tiled roofs.

There’s a silence in the mountains that feels fuller than anything you’ll find in the city. Not emptier, not lonelier—just fuller. The kind of silence that contains things: possibility, peace, the crunch of snow under your boots, the clink of a glass just before you take a sip. It’s the kind of silence that makes you slow down, look up, and feel like you’re exactly where you’re meant to be. For me, that was drinking a glass of High West whiskey surrounded by the mountains. 

Few distilleries divide opinion quite like Loch Lomond. Often underestimated, sometimes misunderstood, it doesn’t trade on bucolic charm or romantic tales of illicit stills. Instead, it is rooted in industrial ambition and technical ingenuity - qualities that, ironically, have led to some of the most distinct single malts coming out of Scotland today.

Annandale Distillery has a history that stretches back more than a century, marked by ambition, innovation, and revival. Once a vital part of the Scotch whisky industry, it fell silent for decades before its meticulous restoration. I learned about the distillery's revival recently at a wonderful dinner hosted by Professor David Thomson and his wife Teresa at Fortnum & Mason.

Easter signals the arrival of spring, a season of renewal, celebration and hopefully some long-awaited warmth. As you get together with family to celebrate this festive occasion, it is important to make your drink selections just right. The following selection offers a diverse range of wine and 3 delicious whiskies, each embodying the essence of its origin and matching perfectly with traditional Easter food.