Meet the author who’s turned whisky tasting notes into short festive stories - all set on Christmas Eve
The warm and heady experience of sipping a dram has inspired a whole new style of storytelling this Christmas.
If, like me, your Christmas is full of traditions - many of them revolving around books (my favourite being Nigel Slater’s Christmas Chronicles) - then this new festive whisky themed release is an ideal gift. Independent publishing imprint Mennie Drinks recently announced the release of The Night Afore, a hand-numbered, limited-edition Christmas chapbook featuring three atmospheric short stories inspired by whisky - each set on Christmas Eve.
Printed in a short run of just 100 copies and bound using traditional Singer-sewn stitching, The Night Afore is the first Glenfiction (the literary storytelling arm of Mennie Drinks – turning whisky tasting notes into short, sensory narratives) short story anthology and continues Mennie Drinks’ commitment to slow publishing: small-batch printed objects, produced with care, designed to be held, read and gifted – in a world of disposable digital content.
Rather than flavour wheels or technical language, Glenfiction brings readers into the world of whisky through atmosphere, character, folklore and place.
At a time when many readers are exploring drink culture through memoir, essay and narrative non-fiction, Glenfiction offers something new: fiction as an entry point into whisky. By reframing flavour as a story, the aim is to to reach readers who love short stories or literary magazines but may never have considered whisky “for them”.
“This is something I’d been thinking about for a long time, and the Glenfiction writing is something I’ve been doing for a couple of years,” said Alex Mennie, founder of Mennie Drinks and author of The Night Afore.
“It started when I did a creative writing course a few years ago and started jotting down snippets of ideas and then I had an idea of basing stories on whisky tasting notes. So you have all these adjectives, and whisky is already rife with stories about people, places and folklore or something a bit mysterious. When you add those together with the adjectives from whisky tasting notes, you’re sort of halfway there to a story.”
What started as a fiction writing exercise for Mr Mennie has turned festive, with the launch of the first chapbook, a small booklet of short stories. “I always liked the idea of putting something together for Christmas, and I had a couple of ideas that made sense for that. I was driven into doing it this year with the rise of AI generated content, social media or influencer content, I was bracing myself for a backlash (against that), so the idea of having something quite tactile and crafted for people to hold and share and keep for future Christmases was quite important as well.”
Books and words were part of Mr Mennie’s past Christmases which is another influence in The Night Afore, which includes three short stories that blend whisky flavour, seasonal folklore and the special quiet of Christmas Eve – that liminal moment when the distance between the ordinary and the magical feels at its thinnest.
The stories are: The Cracked Barrel whose blurb reads: “High above snowy Banffshire, the Scott family are descending on the old manse for Christmas, joined this year by a new recruit.” The second is Loquere Latin: “It’s Christmas Eve on a Glasgow street ‘so posh the postie speaks Latin’” and Spirit Yet to Come: “Loosely inspired by A Christmas Carol – and by a conversation with BenRiach’s brand ambassador Stewart Buchanan, showing a distillery as it never existed.”
Speaking of the influence of his past Christmases, Mr Mennie said: “When I was growing up we always had special Christmas books or books about Christmas, collections of poetry or short stories, which always came out at that time of year. It’s something you could dive into every year and become part of the Christmas tradition.”
The book could also be a way to introduce whisky to a new audience, as Mr Mennie explained: “Whisky brands in particular at the moment are looking for new audiences and new ways to bring people into whisky. I thought if there was any crossover between short fiction and that kind of cosy Christmas storytelling aesthetic, and if that drove people to explore whisky in a different way then it was something to look out for.”
Mr Mennie added: "Christmas Eve is full of anticipation – and has always had a special magic for me. Each story in The Night Afore sits in that liminal space, a time when some say the distance between the real world and a magical world is at its thinnest.
“Just the sort of thing you reach for when you want to read something atmospheric by the fire – dram in hand – before the whole world wakes up again on Christmas morning”
The Night Afore is printed in the UK on uncoated stock with a singer-sewn binding. It is 60 pages and A6 in size and is bound with red thread against a green background for a traditional Christmas look and feel. It’s this care and attention to detail that Mr Mennie hopes will make it something to hand down, and enjoy again and again at Christmas.
It will be available for pre-order from 28 November (shipping early December), priced at £15, exclusively via menniedrinks.com/shop.
It’s the first of what Mr Mennie hopes to be a series of short stories based on whisky tasting notes, produced as part of the Mennie Drinks slow-publishing platform dedicated to the culture of bars, whisky, and cocktails. Find out more of the latest whisky news, interviews, tastings and exclusive discounts via The Scotsman Whisky Club which you can sign up to at Scotsman.com
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