Staying in tune: The confluence of music and whisky

Whisky is a multisensory experience, but sound is the sense with which it arguably has the weakest connection. The audible impact of the production process is inescapable (just ask anyone who’s been through a distillery while the mill is on), but the act of pouring and drinking a spirit involves little noise at all. 

Nonetheless, the question of how to capture a distillery’s audio footprint or represent a whisky through sound is contemplated frequently — from Robert Burns’ poem Scotch Drink, to distillery ‘soundtracks’, to unique musical compositions. 

Ahead of the 2023 Campbeltown Malts Festival, Glen Scotia partnered with spirits writer Neil Ridley, folk singer-songwriter Jenny Sturgeon and music producer Dean Honer to create an audio representation of its distillery. The resulting composition, The Sound of Glen Scotia, comprised two tracks created from audio snippets gathered from around the distillery. As Ridley put it, the place emits an “extraordinary array of sounds, frequencies, hums, knocks and rattles” — ample fodder for eager composers.

In August 2025, GlenDronach announced a partnership with composer Rob Lewis to create a musical accompaniment for its 12-year-old single malt. The piece was named “Valley of the Brambles”, the Gaelic translation of GlenDronach, and incorporates sound recordings from the production process for percussive support. It’s intended to be listened to while drinking GlenDronach 12, but Lewis said the piece was devised in a way that evokes tactile elements too, for example walking over gravel or running your hand along a cask.

More recently, two Highlands distilleries — Fettercairn in Aberdeenshire and Torabhaig on the Isle of Skye — have unveiled musical works designed to represent their whiskies.

Torabhaig commissioned an original composition for its new Legacy Series release Sound of Sleat, named for the waterway that separates Skye’s most southerly corner from the Scottish mainland. The distillery brought in accordionist and bagpiper Mairearad Green and musician and composer Mike Vass, both Highland-born, to write the piece. It was inspired by a reel (a type of dance accompaniment) written by composer and fellow Highlander Donald MacKinnon in the 1950s.

Fettercairn’s audio project was linked to its new Vanguard Series. They were inspired by master whisky maker Gregg Glass’ synaesthesia, a neurological condition where inputs that pique one sense can lead to experiences in another. For the first release, Glass (who says he “tastes in colour”) enlisted two fellow synaesthetes — singer-songwriter Kathryn Joseph and Barry Burns from post-rock band Mogwai — to create a musical composition based on his tasting notes for two whiskies.

For some the connection to music is not project-based — it’s a lifestyle. Scottish bottler and blender Turntable Spirits is striped through with musicality, from the “harmonising” act of blending whiskies to the song names adorning its bottles. Like the spirits that comprise its blended Scotches, the namesake tracks span styles. Artists referenced so far include Blondie (“One Way Or Another”), Foo Fighters (“All My Life”), and Daft Punk (“Harder Better Faster Stronger”). Of the inventive presentations abounding in the independent bottling sector at the moment, this is (perhaps ironically) one of the most off-beat.

The brands initiating these projects are thinking bigger than a whisky–music Venn diagram of customers. Each element of the composition — the collaborating artists, musical genre, presentation style, and even how the music and its muse are designed to be enjoyed together — can tell us something about those who devised it. 

The inaugural performance of The Sound of Glen Scotia was at the distillery during the Campbeltown Malts Festival, embedding the music in the place that generated it. Lewis’ Valley of the Brambles was designed specifically to complement GlenDronach’s flagship single malt. While more abstract in its interpretation, the Vanguard Series is intimately linked to Fettercairn, inspired as it is by Glass’ neurodivergence.

When done thoughtfully, communicating these identity cues through artistic media doesn’t only serve brands. It also helps those less familiar with whisky’s vernacular to understand and connect with it. 

The Rhythm and Booze Project, the whisky-loving musical duo of Felipe Schrieberg and Paul Archibald, combines blues-style performances with light-touch spirits education, including tastings. It’s an imaginative and interactive approach to sharing knowledge that can only serve to widen whisky’s circle. (In 2024, they took their passion project a step further by launching their own independent bottling label, Rhythm and Booze Records.)

Looking at the future of whisky marketing, it’s easy to see how such artistic collaborations dry up. They’re rich in originality but low in measurable ROI. Amid continuing market contraction, art is likely to lose ground to advertising — or, perhaps more concerningly, AI could be enlisted to replace the artist. An AI program could, for example, identify the typical chemical compounds in whisky and assign them individual musical notes or chords to map the melodies in particular expressions. 

But to deploy technology in this way is to completely miss the point of such projects. For the AI program, it’s simply about translation. For the artist, it’s about interpretation, inspiration and expression. We should keep allowing whisky to be an inspiration.