Hello all! I’m going to try keep this brief but as for a little about me, I’m a couple months from 21 and I live in Yorkshire. As the title states I bought my first bottle of scotch (and whisky in general) recently! I simply couldn’t resist.

I’ve been researching a fair amount into the subject (as I usually do) and I just so happened to stumble onto a whisky shop when visiting Cardiff. A lovely guy proceeded to help me and I got to try out a handful of bottles some of which I’d been looking at. This included Arran 10 and Bunnahabain. I also tried some of the ones he pulled out such as my local Filey Bay Flagship and the Benriach 12 triple cask finish.

I liked all of these for various different reasons that I won’t ramble on about but one I tried that I’d heard good things about but one I didn’t get along with all that much was the Kilchoman Machir bay for a reason that I couldn’t discern from the brief taste I got. Some of the other bottles that I liked I didn’t fully appreciate as much as I should either for a similar reason along with juggling small talk and forgetting to fully focus on what I was tasting (due to nerves at the time) for the first couple I tried.

As a funny side note I tried the Toiteach A Dhà instead of what I wanted to as I misunderstood him and he misunderstood me at the time and I didn’t realise as I hadn’t tried them. It was lovely from what I had but I ended up picking the £1 cheaper 12 year as that’s what I wanted to try and heard good things on when I was researching. To put it bluntly it was an amazing blind buy. I’m absolutely blown away by its quality to price ratio. The fruity and nutty notes interwoven with the oily and rich mouthfeel. Everything about it reminded me of Christmas. It made me think of roasted chestnuts on an open fire with a bowl of star anise and potpourri to the side.

Now to my request:

I’m looking to buy another something a good while away from now whilst I sit and slowly enjoy my recent purchase. Something different perhaps- as for general flavours I like in food etcetera and the little whisky I’ve drank with my girlfriend’s dad, I like smokey notes generally but I don’t believe I have tried the medicinal side of smoke in scotch. I would quite like a campfire/forest fire kind of smoke that I felt I got from the toiteach A Dhà. I come from a mainly red wine background with an affinity for earthy high tannins reds as a side note and I love a good pint of lager too. I like port and I’m interested in port cask finishes or other unique finishes. I love orange flavoured things too and lemon within reason such as lemoncello which I adore. I could go on forever haha but I’ll shut up for now. I’m mainly just hoping to get some recommendations/understanding of what is out there and what I should look into that won’t break the bank. I’m open minded to any flavour profiles and things.

Any advice or discussions are greatly appreciated. I don’t have any friends really so I thought I’d try this out. I Hope I haven’t made any mistakes in my post.