MY first exposure to eau de vie was accidental. Being an inquisitive five-year-old, I was exploring the bathroom cabinet in our home below Stirling Castle. There, behind my father’s shaving brushes, was a pewter flask and inside it was a glass bottle, corked, labelled Brandy. The contents tasted awful but no worse than the bar of soap I’d mistaken for my mother’s home-made fudge a few weeks earlier.
