(Editor's Note: 10 days after covid, my sense of taste and smell seem to be restored. I have sampled a variety of foods and drinks that I know very well, and finally they all smell like they are supposed to, with a full array of richness and variety. Strangely, the thing that took the longest to come back was ketchup - go figure.)
Master Distiller Billy Walker is a highly divisive figure in scotch whisky. A former research chemist, he began overseeing the distilling process at BenRiach in 2004, and moved on in the 2010s to resurrect Glenglassaugh and - famously or infamously - GlenDronach.
His time at GlenDronach is fairly well known and also somewhat notorious: he added old stock to the various GlenDronach bottlings to enrich the flavor and build the brand's reputation... but when the old stock ran low, he purportedly began re-racking lower quality stock into fresh sherry casks, but not disclosing it. People noticed that the various age statements were tasting thinner and thinner, and some bottlings were noticeably worse than before.
