At the centre of Fettercairn’s Vanguard Series is Gregg Glass, whose approach to tasting moves beyond aroma wheels and neatly written notes. For him, flavour doesn’t sit still on the palate. It shifts, translates, and reappears through entirely different sensory pathways. His tasting notes aren’t paragraphs. They’re drawings. They’re shaped as much by the music he listens to as what’s in the glass.

That idea comes to life across the series. From the vividly illustrated labels on the Vanguard Rare releases to Lorica, a commissioned musical score inspired by the whiskies themselves, this is less about describing flavour and more about reinterpreting it.

The Vanguard Series isn’t just a collection of bottlings. It’s a statement. A reminder that tasting doesn’t have to be linear, literal, or even verbal. It can be seen, heard, and felt in ways that push whisky beyond tradition and into something far more expressive.

Learn more about the the Vanguard Collection in Charlene Rooke’s piece “The Taste of Sound, the Colour of Smell, and the Shape of Flavour” which can be found in Edition 03 of the Flavour Report.