We are delighted to have won no fewer than two of the coveted ‘Drammie’ awards this year, as ‘Best Whisky Distillery’ and ‘Most Exciting/ Innovative Whisky Producer/ Bottler.  We think this is excellent news, not least because they are voted for by you good people who actually go out there and buy the stuff - as opposed to industry insiders.

There is nothing that could mean more to us. Thank you.

The Drammies website says: "The Drammie Awards were the brainchild of "For Whisky Lovers" contributing editor Kevin Erskine in his previous role as the unofficial voice of the whiskey consumer, via his industry-first The Scotch Blog.  In much the same vein as the People's Choice Awards,  the mission of the Drammie Awards is to put the power of “recognition” in the hands of the whiskey enthusiast."

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Otto Hermelin is Associate Professor in the Department of Geological Sciences at the University of Stockholm. He is conducting research into the maturation process in whisky and  how temperature and humidity affect the maturation in four of Islay's bonded warehouses. He is monitoring casks at Bruichladdich, Kilchoman, Ardbeg and Bunnahabhain distilleries of which ten are located in Bruichladdich Warehouse 14.

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Aruba is an island lying at the southern tip of the Caribbean archipelago, nestling in the crook of the Gulf of Venezuela.  Presided over by Her Majesty Queen Beatrix, Aruba forms part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands and, according to official statistics, 101,484 people currently call it home.

And why might we be troubling you with fascinating facts from a lovely, but relatively obscure, corner of the southern Caribbean? Well it appears that the people of Aruba have a remarkable thirst for Scotch whisky.

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The Angels' Share, a Scottish film directed by that great portrayer of gritty social realism Ken Loach, took the coveted Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival this year.  The story revolves around a whisky auction, a group of young Glaswegians, and a 'unique cask of Islay's Malt Mill' that comes to a sticky end in some Irn Bru bottles.

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It is always encouraging to see investment going in to the Scotch whisky industry.

Diageo, following on from Pernod Ricard’s £40m investment in its malt distilleries announced last week, have upped the anti - big time - to a cool £1bn to fuel future expansion in the the emerging markets of Asia, Latin America and Africa.

Commentators are very excited by this booming investment. Clearly on the face of it this is a Good Thing. It is good for whisky and the industry, but is it good for Scotland?

Of that headline grabbing figure, £500m is to build two 10m litre Roseile class distillofactories, expand existing capacity by 20m litres, and build new warehousing to store all the maturing spirit in.

Diageo will seek planning permission for Roseile 2 at one of three existing potential sites Teaninich, Inchgower and Glendullan.

It will in addition expand capacity at nearly half its existing 28 distilleries, and is looking to build the second distillery, Roseile 3, in two to three years time.

Diageo said it would consider building a third plant if whisky sales continued to grow at more than 10% a year to make four Roseile class plants.

The other £500m is the working capital for the extra 40m litres (possibly 50m) of spirit per annum that will be laid down over the next five years. Distilling is a very capital intensive business.

The company will increase its existing single malt distilling capacity by 50%.

So it’s £500m in infrastructure and £500m in cash flow over 5 years of extra distillation. ‘100s’ of new jobs will be created. “Whisky Jobs Galore!”

The Guardian reports Campbell Evans of the Scotch Whisky Association (SWA) saying that the promise of these new jobs marks ‘a turning point’ for the industry, because ‘while many producers have been increasing production – including reopening mothballed distilleries – it has so far not particularly boosted employment’.

However I happen to know one reopened, mothballed distillery that employs 51 people.

The reality is that whisky distilling is super efficient. The £4bn turnover industry employs only 8,000 people - and most of them are in administrative, warehousing, production and marketing roles; around 750 are employed in distilling alone.

Few have The Independent reminded folk that “in 2009 Diageo ended a 192- year history of Johnnie Walker with the Ayrshire town when it closed the facility in March with 500 job losses.” 200 were relocated.

So how many new jobs will the £1bn new investment create? How many are the SWA’s vaunted ‘turning point’, the news channels’ headline grabber, the ‘Whisky Jobs Galore’?

Er, actually 100 new jobs. That’s £10m per job.

In addition, to be fair, there will be 20 apprentices and graduate trainees per year, over the next five years, but these maybe funded by government initiatives. There will be construction jobs but these are rarely for locals.

By contrast, James Watt’s £12m turnover BrewDog today has announced 40 new jobs - for the investment of £2.2m

Diageo increases its current single malt distilling capacity by a whopping 50% and creates just 100 jobs. It is this extraordinary efficiency that we should be in awe of - not the phoney ‘jobs galore’ spin.

At the recent World Whisky Conference Diageo's Nick Morgan called for a conversation.

In whisky industry parlance, a 'conversation' is a euphemism for 'this is what we are going to do'.

The subject is, surprise surprise, the contentious new category, blended malt. Morgan's proposition, as it was tweeted by drinks industry news provider Just Drinks, is he wants to sow the seeds of converting existing single malts in to new blended malts. This is the reheated Cardhu Debacle all over again. back then in 2004 Diageo were obliged to concede that, while not exactly illegal, it was not in the spirit of things to hoodwink the consumer. At the time, in full Arnie-mode, a spokesman said: "we'll be back".

And here they are.

But this time the landscape has changed: SWA members have now seen the light; a new category has been specifically created for this purpose.

Nick's conversation is about setting the narrative for allowing certain single malts to become blended malts. The reasoning is simple, and of course it is to do with money: a blended malt would allow the better margins of a single malt to be achieved, but with the unlimited volume of a blended whisky: blended malt equals the best of both worlds. This economic argument has already won over SWA members; there is no longer any industry opposition.

How will whisky retailers be convinced? Continuity of supply, better price points. And the whisky-buying public? Expect platitudes along the lines of 'blending is an art', our master blender, cheaper prices for your favourite malt, the brand looks the same, no one will notice the difference, etc.

And of course they would be right. 90% of whisky is exported overseas, so brand-conscious Johnny Foreigner is unlikely to catch on to the deception, that his whisky no longer comes form the specific place that he thought has been told it came from, but instead some anonymous blending facility. And, and this is the main point, if origin, spirit, appellation and brand are decoupled, where will it all end?

After all, the only difference on his favourite Scotch whisky will be the transposition of two little words, just 3mm high: 'single' for 'blended'.

What does Scotland get out of Scotch? No one really wants to talk about this delicate subject. Newspapers are bombarded with good news press releases from the Scotch Whisky Association (SWA) about £150 per second being earned by whisky with the inference that it is for Scotland's benefit.

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The Scotch Whisky Association have redefined the new whisky categories as: ‘single malt’, ‘blended whisky’, ‘blended malt’, ‘single grain’, and ‘blended grain’.

But for whose benefit? Most people in the trade disapprove of the ‘blended malt’ title which replaces the perfectly appropriate existing term ‘vatted malt’ for a bottling of several single malts.

The new term, ‘blended malt’, also replaces the illegal term, ‘pure malt’. But it appears to deliberately confuse two, well known titles, the widely accepted ‘blended whisky’, and the prestigious Single Malt.

A cynic might claim this is deliberate confusion, precisely what the SWA (prop. Diageo and Pernod Ricard) wanted following the unsavoury Cardhu Debacle of 2004. Then, Diageo wanted Cardhu, their well known single malt, to become a vatted or 'pure malt', several single malts mixed together, but still called Cardhu and under the same presentation. At the time this led to vociferous claims of undermining the credibility of the single malt sector, and accusations of bully boy tactics.

Diageo, via the SWA, simply changed the rules.