When Billy Abbot Gets Inside Your Head!
I was obviously delighted to see Kate return from the Whisky Show in London, mainly, I have to admit because I knew she was bringing me a copy of Billy Abbot’s new book The Philosophy of Whisky. I also knew that as Kate had just returned from a “hard” weekend’s work in London she would have very little chat and I would get peace to read it!
As soon as I heard that Billy was writing a book I knew I had to have it. I’ve always liked his writing style either on the Whisky Exchange Blog or on his own blog, Spirited Matters. Over and above that I don’t think I know anyone that knows more about booze than Billy. If I ever have any booze questions he is always my go to guy and he never fails to answer, and I can have some pretty random questions!
Billy is quite possibly also the hardest working / nicest person on the internet and I don’t think there is a Facebook whisky group that I’m a member of that Billy isn’t a regular contributor to; always happy to share his knowledge and always unbelievably polite to many people who probably don’t deserve it - even when repeating the same answer for the 9000th time in a day.
For those that don’t already know Billy you can read more about him here.
Anyway the book itself is excellent and not just because Billy shares many similar ideas to me on whisky. It’s an easy, enjoyable read that somehow teaches you things without you even noticing it. I no doubt will re-read it and take notes so I apologise to anyone that will be on any of my tastings in the near future as I'll just be re-telling Billy’s work! “At least you’ll have some new stories”, I hear you cry.
I’m lucky enough to know Billy fairly well, but the funniest thing about reading his book was that, for some reason, my brain read it to me in Billy’s voice so he truly did get inside my head!
As you can tell I’m no regular book critic, but I would highly recommend adding this to your book shelf. The 4 step process of how to make whisky is brilliant and is worth the purchasing price alone! I just hope that this is the start of many future books from Billy.
Launches on the 14th of October.
