At the helm

In a new series Dominic Roskrow celebrates some of the people who are contributing to whisky,quietly making our lives richer. First up is Ingvar Ronde,publisher of the Malt Whisky Yearbook.

Publishing a whisky book is like trying to sail across Portsmouth harbour. It takes dedication and focus to navigate a path through the crowded waterways and avoid sinking without trace.

Meet Captain Ronde.

He's just published the 2009 Malt Whisky Yearbook and in four years he's carved out a niche in the market place.

If you're not familiar with it then my advice is to go out and get yourself a copy because it's an essential aid to anyone with a love of whisky.There are pages on each of Scotland's distilleries, features written by a collection of whisky writers, a round up of distilleries elsewhere in the world, and a back section packed with enough statistics to give Wisden's Cricketing Almanac a run for its money.Not only that, but it's frighteningly up to date.

And if you've purchased a copy in the past and don't think there's much point in buying the new version, think again – a whopping 70 per cent of the content is fresh.

It's an impressive body of work.

So how come a 51-year-old Swede has set the world of whisky publishing on fire? For Ingvar Ronde, it was a natural progression.

He'd been introduced to malt whisky by a friend who gave him a copy of Michael Jackson's Malt Whisky Companion.

“Like so many others I am indebted to Michael for opening up the doors to a whole new world,”he says.“I only met Michael a couple of times before he passed away but I was delighted to have him as a contributor to the first edition of the year book.

“The Malt Yearboo...

• By : Dominic Roskrow
• In : History
• Issue : 77
• Page : 33
• Words : 817