Normally I drink my scotch neat (or with a small ice cube), and am dubious of adding anything that would dilute or spoil the taste. But scotch cocktails are handy when you want to stretch your drink and not have so much alcohol, plus they can be very refreshing pre-dinner.  

I recently tried a few mixers with Speyburn 10-year-old scotch, which has sweet notes on the finish. Still, I figured I would prefer the club soda or ginger ale combos – yet my favorite mixer was cream soda. If you get down to the base elements, cream soda has vanilla added to it, and vanilla is a typical note that you’ll find in both scotches and wines aged in oak barrels (Speyburn is aged for ten years in American oak ex-bourbon and ex-sherry casks). Always worth experimenting to find what you actually like!

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