Robin Laing 1953-2025

Robin has been part of the Society’s fabric since our early days, performing his whisky songs and poetry at The Vaults in the early 1990s and joining our Tasting Panel almost 30 years ago.  

He has been responsible for countless fantastic Society bottle names and ever-imaginative Tasting Notes over the years, and his wit, wisdom and endless passion for whisky in general and for the Society in particular will be hugely missed. Anyone who was fortunate enough to hear Robin perform his music or poetry over the years will appreciate what a special talent he was.  

As the Whisky Bard, Robin took his beloved national drink as inspiration for a fantastic mix of songs and poetry, which he performed along with tastings at events in the UK, around Europe and further afield.  

Robin says he fell in love with whisky as a student, working a summer job at the the Arisaig Hotel in the west Highlands in the 1970s, where he was put in charge of the cocktail bar.

“For that time, they had a remarkable selection of single malts, and it was my job to tell the customers about them, so I had to get interested pretty quickly,” he said. “I realised that single malts were quite different from blended whisky, and then discovered Talisker 100°. That got me started, and for the rest of my student days I would always have a decent bottle tucked away in the cupboard.”

His combined passion for single malt and folk music grew, and finally led him to quit his day job to concentrate on a one-man whisky performance, which he called the Angels’ Share. He played throughout the summer of 1996 in Edinburgh, at what used to be the Tron Tavern next to the Royal Mile, and found that his stories and whisky-soaked songs had an eager audience.

The Society was instrumental in Robin’s new career gaining momentum. He had received a membership as a Christmas present and when he was planning on performing The Angels’ Share, he found his first willing audience in the Members’ Room at The Vaults.  

At around the same time he also started to play a role on the Tasting Panel. “The whole growth of my concentration on music and whisky came together at that time,” he told Unfiltered in 2017. “I told Anne Griffiths, who was the venue director at the time, that I would be fascinated to come along and sit in on the Tasting Panel. The next thing I knew I was invited in. I thought I'd be sitting in a corner observing, but Charlie MacLean was chairman and he was having none of it...he said: ‘Right come in here and let’s hear what you have to say.’ It took me a while to warm up but I soon got into the swing of it and here I am 20 years later.”  

Robin’s setlist would include everything from whisky-based love ballads to raucous singalongs. He sang about Biawa Makalaga, pageboy and butler to James Grant at Glen Grant distillery. He sang about tossing stones into the sea at Talisker Bay on Skye. He sang about Heaven Hill in Kentucky as a metaphor for a woman’s naked body. And he sang about the US spying on Bruichladdich’s distilling process in We Can’t Let Al Qaeda Get Their Hands On This.

“I’ve got a nose for stories,” he said. “I also think Scotland is a nation of storytellers, I think it's in our DNA from the millennia of dark winters we've had, sitting around keeping each other entertained in kitchen ceilidhs.