Chitra Ramaswamy : Frankly, I do give a dram.

The owner, like most around here, was English and a whisky connoisseur. He picked a 14-year-old Clynelish – a good starter dram, he said. Floral hints and, I later discovered online, waxy notes reminiscent of a High church. One of the main reasons for falling in love with the water of life, by the way, are the tasting notes, which is where all purple prose goes to die (or at least get steaming).

Anyway, my whisky guru took a bottle down from a high shelf in his tiny, bay-shaped bar. There was dust on its narrow shoulders and it was half-full, or half-empty depending on how much whisky you've imbibed. He pulled out the stopper (good noise), and sniffed deeply. "Heather," he declared, in much the same way Mary Poppins rolled "rum punch" on her tongue after tasting her magic medicine.

He poured a dram and pushed a jug of water towards me. I added a sploosh and then, under his directions, wet my lips with the stuff. I was smitten.

In that one glorious sip I had become that most enviable of celestial beings down the pub – a whisky drinker. You know, the sort of refined, life-loving, garrulous savant whose natural state is to smoulder, who can usually be found running a finger round the rim of a heavy-bottomed glass in a dark bar listening to Hungarian jazz, who recites poetry off the cuff ... and so on. Yes, this complex bouquet of feelings can be achieved with just one sip. That's how strong liquid sunshine is.

Because, let's be honest., whisky is seriously cool. Raymond Chandler, George Clooney, Greta Garbo, James Joyce, Humphrey Bogart, some other women (please?) ... we can't look like them, but we can take a whisky like them.

And so I did. Highland Park and Laphroaig, Glenfiddich and Dalmore, Talisker and Caol Ila ... I tried them all. I even rubbed some on my gums to ease a toothache one night. I was seriously getting into the stuff.

Then I decided to buy my first bottle, a momentous occasion, second only to your baby's first smile. I spent months trying whisky after whisky in the name of research. And then I found Lagavulin, known as the aristocrat of the Islay malts. Really, it's a big peaty bruiser. The Bill Sikes of single malts. I was also turned on by the fact that it is often – and ridiculously – spoken of as a man's whisky. Ladies, I gather, would rather stay at home, watch The Apprentice and nurse a hot Ribena.

Anyway, gendered tasting notes aside, the descriptions of Lagavulin are so histrionic they deserve an Oscar. A bear-hug of peat. Rubber bands, toffee sauce on digestive biscuits and (my personal favourite) roasted chestnuts from a street vendor on a winter's morning. I was sold. So far I've had one dram and though I haven't detected a single street vendor, I'm definitely getting a hint of fish-box. That's the thing about whisky. It just keeps on giving.

This article was first published in the Scotland on Sunday. June 5th, 2011