Let’s get one thing straight immediately. The information I am about to deliver may lead you down the irreversible life-path of spending the majority of your downtime sitting at home with your favourite ASDA cheese selection, a not too expensive single malt, all while deciding on whether you should watch the entire next season of Game of Thrones back-to-back or just stare blankly at the wall while the inevitable destruction of your entire social existence happens around you.
Either way you win.
I first stumbled upon the unlikely pairing of whisky and cheese in the early hours of a Sunday morning. Fuelled on whisky highballs and half-priced tinnies, I thought it would be a good idea to turn to the only thing that I own that could deliver third-degree burns instantly, and of course made a cheese jaffle. I emptied the meagre yet relatively exotic contents of the refrigerator cheese shelf onto two slices of Wonder White and slapped it into a jaffle iron. I then poured myself a glass of smoky whisky and proceeded to wait the agonising seven minutes before I knew I could attempt to eat the toasted cheese laser I was currently compiling using the famous ‘bite and blow’ technique made famous by my father.
The result was out of this world. Cataclysmic. Divine. Yes, I was already a little belted and probably didn’t know any better but the com- bination of hot, oozing mozzarella, bubbling cheddar and liquefied Danish blue alongside the smoke and spice of a peated whisky was simply perfection. I felt like I had discovered the Rosetta stone of culinary food experiences, a connection between the indecipherable twaddle rolled-out in modern cheese pairings and the spirit of the common (Scots)man.
Indeed, cheese and whisky go together like butter on toast, which is hardly surprising considering the last metaphor also pairs a dairy-based fatty emulsification with a grain based product of fermentation and heat. They were simply built to belong together.