Distillers can be very protective of their hard-won malts, especially those who carry the most prestigious of names. From time to time, they must relinquish the hold on their casks, when one is sold to an independent bottler, for instance. Before spirit changes hands, the distiller - green-eyed and flush with passion - will take a single teaspoon of another distillery’s single malt, and add it to the spirit in the cask. Just a dash it takes, but that whisky can no longer bear the name its distillery of birth.