Many a true word said in jest, An Buachaill Caol Dubh. The Suntory company in Japan owes its success today to a remarkable piece of industrial espionage just after the Great War, when a young Japanese chemist, Masataka Taketsuru, came over to study at a Glasgow University summer school and started touring various distilleries.
He was taken on briefly by a couple as a chemist in the quality control department, and assuously noted everything needed for the production of good whisky, including the water hardness, the type of soils around there and the varieties of barley.
When he got back home (with a young Scottish wife in tow) he set about touring the highlands of Japan until he found a location which was as close as he could find to the Scottish distillery and there he set about producing the first Japanese 'Scotch' at the Yamazaki in 1923.