I spent years working for some of Scotland's most recognised whisky brands - The Macallan, Highland Park, The Glenrothes, Benriach, Glenglassaugh. I know what exceptional spirits look like from the inside. I also know what the industry does to the people on the outside trying to get in.

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Most of it is unnecessary. The vocabulary, the ritual, the quiet implication that there's a right way to appreciate whisky and you probably haven't found it yet. I tried to change that from inside established brands. It's a slow process. I got impatient.

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I also have synaesthesia. Flavour and aroma produce involuntary colour responses - when I taste whisky, I see colour. For a long time I treated that as an oddity. Then I realised it was the most useful thing I had. If my sensory experience is completely different from everyone else's in the room, then everyone's experience is different from everyone else's. There are no wrong answers. There is only what you actually perceive.

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That's not a philosophy I borrowed. It's something I worked out by tasting whisky with a brain that works differently to most. It shapes every experience I design.

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I hold an IBD Certificate in Distilling and an Edinburgh Whisky Academy Diploma. I have an MA in International Marketing. None of that is why this works - it's just evidence that I know what I'm talking about when I say the industry has been doing this wrong.