How should we drink whisky?
Some people like it neat, because they like the warmth of the alcohol and the feel of the flavors. But when we do our assessments, we bring everything down to 20% alcohol. That’s 50/50 with water, because we feel that at that level you’re maximizing the release of the aromas and the characteristics of the whisky and you’re removing the nose-prickle pepperiness of the alcohol. So that’s how I drink my whisky, with water, at room temperature. If it’s warm, like in Bangkok, you might chill it a bit. Because when you add water, there’s a reaction, it heats it up.

Should we only use younger whiskies with cocktails?
Chivas 12 works beautifully with cocktails, but with something like Chivas 18, I’d use it for classic cocktails. But that’s my view. There are no rules.

Why do whisky blends get such a bad rap?
They’re all great. But they’re all different. People find these differences and some they like and some they don’t. But the ones they dislike are not bad whiskies. When we blend Chivas, we also do Glenlivet [a single malt]. We’re using the same quality of spirit for both. In reality, what you’re getting in a blend is something miles greater and miles more complex than in a single malt because you have all those single malts mixed together.

So why drink single malts?
Because there’s a more romantic story behind them. You can go and see them and touch them and see them being produced.

Can you explain your job?
There are two arts to blending. First, there’s selecting the malts, the different grains and harmonizing them, bringing them together. When I created Chivas 18, I used Chivas 12 as a reference. I didn’t do what I wanted. It’s blended in a tradition, a style that came from the Chivas brothers in the 1800s. It’s similar in style but different in taste. And the second part is maintaining the taste. The whiskies were put into casks 20 years ago. Since then, some distilleries may have stopped producing. That means those [single malts] come out of the blend, and that changes the harmony, the experience. So we look at what other whiskies we could bring in, change the percentages and keep the same taste.