Although the liquor has been a drinker’s favourite for centuries, its flavour achieved by burning peat beneath the flowering barley in a kiln, its future is anything but certain. This statement was not made in a vacuum; last July, Alastair Collier of climate tech firm A Healthier Earth warned that peated whisky was at risk of being banned within five years. On the Hebridean island of Islay, original home of peated whisky, the holes in the ground left by the ingredient’s extraction have taken a toll on the landscape. A sudden ban on peated whisky, however, would be disastrous. In Scotland alone, the production of peated whisky accounts for thousands of jobs.