So the BBC website reports that the world’s oldest surviving bottle of whisky is for sale.

Any whisky lover is going to be at least a little curious reading a headline like that; will it be drinkable? Will it be nice? Will the person who ends up buying it drink it? It’s a 150 years old. Whisky is supposed to improve with age (not universally true by any means, but an element of age does tend to help most whiskies, and so we want to know about this.

After clicking through to read the story with relish, it turns out that it is an old bottle of whisky rather than a bottle of old whisky. It was distilled by a company that closed its operations 150 years ago. The bottle is approximately that old. Whisky doesn’t improve in the bottle. Best case, it is in the same condition it was when it was bottled. I didn’t see any mention of how old the whisky was when it was bottled - how long it had matured since distillation.

With an expected selling price of around £10,000 (by no means the most expensive whisky ever), I imagine that what they aren’t telling us is that this would have been a pretty ordinary whisky in its day (and hence not likely to be special now!!). Its value comes from it being an antique and (as far as we know) unique, rather than from the quality of the whisky. Expensive whiskies often have their prices inflated through the ‘antique’ effect, but I imagine that whoever ends up buying this bottle isn’t really expecting to drink it - at least not expecting to enjoy drinking it!

I don’t actually know if whisky cures colds, but here’s a fine bit of anecdotal evidence… Over the past week, myself and my business partner have been feeling a bit under the weather. There was a bit of stress in the winter air - our business is doing really well, but that has been bringing it’s own stresses - moving offices, employing part-time staff, considering getting our first full-time employee, the cash-flow concerns of growing businesses etc.

So we both came down with a cold (probably not helped by being crammed into our tiny office until the move last Thursday).

Unfortunate side-effects of having colds have included grumpiness, sore heads, a tendency to snap at each other and feeling a bit stupid. All of the above symptoms (except possibly the last one) are cured by a good dose of whisky (OK - the sore heads are only cured temporarily).

A nice Islay whisky is perfect for clearing the tubes. If you can’t smell Ardbeg Very Young, you’re probably dead - it’s certainly not any kind of cold I’ve ever come across.

When our Internet connection went down for 5 days, it was pretty much the last straw (capping an even worse couple of weeks for Duncan, when he had been hit on the head with a hockey stick (someone on his own team!) and chipped a tooth on some pork crackling I cooked him!). I was feeling very much the worse for wear, when I spied a miniature bottle of Bowmore I had received for my birthday.

Islay whisky to the rescue

Now Bowmore is not my all time favourite whisky (it’s not even my favourite whisky from the tiny little island it’s from) but it is mighty fine nevertheless, and a wee dram later, I was feeling pretty content. The magic, however, came when I woke up this morning entirely cured of my cold. Miraculous.

I’m sure there will be doubters who will tell you that I was about to get better from it anyway and the whisky had nothing to do with it.

To them, I say “each to his own, but anything that gives me an excuse to have a dram of the islay whisky can’t possibly be a bad thing”