Scot fight! Scot fight!

I only wish I could get the original article that started it, but I'd have to pay for it. This is from Britain's Financial Times.

Tunku on the rocks over scotch habit

Published: January 12 2008 02:00

From Mr Malcolm Lloyd.

Sir, The fact that Tunku Varadarajan ("Down with pubs," FT Magazine, January 5) adds ice to scotch marks him as a philistine and, therefore, incapable of making any intelligent comparisons whatsoever.

Malcolm Lloyd

Tip from a tippler

Published: January 19 2008 02:00

From Mr Edward Brady.

Sir, Malcolm Lloyd’s labelling of Tunku Varadarajan as a philistine for adding ice to his scotch is as harsh as it is misguided (Letters, January 12/13). My formative drinking years in Scotland were spent in the company of whisky tipplers who diluted their spirit with an equal measure of plain water. Not only can whisky cope with such a dilution, it also makes the drink go much further – an important consideration for us frugal Scots.

Edward Brady

Transform your scotch with water

Published: January 26 2008 02:00

From Mr Kevan Pegley.

Sir, Your correspondent Edward Brady (Letters, January 20/21) has adopted a curious position for a self-proclaimed Scot: he appears to think ice and water are equivalent. Chemically they may be, but in their effect on scotch they are as different as the stuff on which the Titanic was sailing to the stuff that sank it.

Water releases the flavour of scotch by weakening the bonds between its aromatic molecules; ice reduces its temperature, making those same bonds more difficult to break.

My formative drinking years were spent avoiding scotch completely. Much later in life an old friend – a Scot – introduced me to the transformation water effected. I urge your readers to try the difference.

Kevan Pegley

I drink my Scotch right from the bottle! No, no, I don't. I slurp it out of a stripper's navel. No, I don't do that either. I drink Scotch over ice because that's the way I've always done it. And I started doing that in college because it was cool that way, daddy-o. But I'm certainly not going to throw myself into the middle of a big Scot fight about the proper way to drink Scotch. I would politely point out to the gentlemen that an inability to look past petty differences and band together in the face of a common foe is what doomed the Welsh. And if the Union is to be torn asunder, as does seem to be the style these days, then suddenly you've got your historically ruthless neighbor to the south to deal with again.

The interesting thing is that all of the UK's nuclear weapons are in Scotland, so if Little Scotland goes it alone, they're going holding a pretty big whip. They might force us all to drink our Scotch with water!