A few years ago, I shared a resource on how to pronounce certain scotches. It basically had every single scotch I’d ever heard of, including some I hadn’t, and an audio file that helped you along with each term. As we know, the names of the distilleries are Gaelic and that is the origin of our pronunciation woes.

In American English, we expect Glenfiddich to be pronounced “Glenfiddish” and not “Glenfiddihck.” By that same token, we’d then guess Bruichladdich to be Brooshladdick… it’s actually closer to Brookladdy. It’s the Gaelic pronunciation that messes us up and the fact that we just don’t have the class that the Scots seem to have when they’re sipping on scotch. 🙂 Fortunately we can lean on the classiness of one Brian Cox as he says the names to 40+ scotches.

Here’s how you pronounce Lagavulin, which is actually straightforward:

Auchentoshan:

And my personal favorite, Bunnahabhain: