Yearly events around drinking: Burns Night
On January 25, people celebrate the poet Robert Burns and enjoy haggis, Scotch, poetry and music. If his most famous poems (“Scots Wha Hae,” “A Red, Red Rose,” “Tam o’ Shanter”) don’t ring a bell, one song might. “You know that song you hear at New Year’s, ‘Auld Lang Syne’? The most sung song in the English language? Robert Burns wrote it,” says Andrew Weir, a long-time Burns Night performer, drinks professional and Braveheart actor, who now hosts Burns Distilled every year in New York. “Every year on the 25th of January, we celebrate this guy’s work in a way that we don’t with Shakespeare or Wordsworth or Tennessee Williams or Oscar Wilde. This doesn’t exist for other figures of literature.”
When you’re in Glasgow, The Horseshoe Bar is known for having the longest continuous bar in Europe. Located on Byres Road, Tennent’s Bar is a 140-year-old pub that’s also a good place to watch sports. The Scotia is the city’s oldest pub and features live music (plus, it’s dog-friendly). Lismore, Park Bar and Ben Nevis are three renowned whisky bars on the west end, while The Pot Still features more than 1,000 whiskies. And for cocktail fans, hit up Panda & Sons, a wonderfully inventive speakeasy.
Rule for drinking like a Scot: Take your whisky neat.
It’s not an “on the rocks” culture.
