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How can peat survive?

Dave Broom
Dave Broom
Thursday, 26 September 2024
kiln filled with peat smoke at Highland Park on Orkney

Many a whisky drinker loves peaty flavours, but peat is implicated in global warming. How can the industry hang on to peaty whiskies in the face of a forthcoming ban on peat for gardeners? Above, the kiln filled with peat smoke at Highland Park on Orkney.

It’s the aroma that gets you first, that comforting, fragrant, weirdly floral smell which the Scottish novelist Neil M Gunn described as ‘the smell of home’. Even if you have an aversion to peated whiskies, the reek of peat itself cannot fail to seduce.

A fifth of Scotland’s land mass (approx...