This year, Whisky Blender turns 15. Fifteen years since two pals from Glasgow had an idea that was, by any sensible measure, a daft one — and somehow it's still going, and we're still having a dram guid time.

How it started

The whole thing came out of a night that went on far longer than it should have. After Whisky An' A' That festival in Ayr (a few too many drams, a big feed, a pub crawl, and a nap on the train home that left us oddly recharged) we ended up in the Solid Rock Café talking nonsense about things nobody had done in whisky yet. Somewhere in there came the idea: what if people could blend their own online?

A stranger sitting nearby overheard us and said it was a great idea. That was basically all the encouragement we needed. We did some digging, registered the domain, drew up sketches and concepts. And then, as these things go, life happened and the idea sat in the whisky cabinet for the best part of a year. Then one day we just said "let's do it," and in November 2011, we flicked the switch and Whisky Blender went live.

What it became

We never set out with big ambitions — we just wanted to be first to do something we, as whisky drinkers, would actually want ourselves. Somehow it got noticed. Over the years we've ended up in places we genuinely never expected — Wired, Playboy, Martha Stewart, and a fair few more besides. A few years in, a rum company in Amsterdam liked the format so much they asked us to build them a Rum Blender too, and we got to work with their master blender sourcing rum from all over the Caribbean (maybe we should bring that back again, it was good).

What it means

Fifteen years is a strange thing to sit with. It means a lot of casks, a lot of bottles, a lot of labels with names that made us laugh out loud when they came through. It means the festivals (including the very first Glasgow's Whisky Festival, when it was still finding its feet in the Arches). It means blends made in memory of people, blends made as daft in-jokes, blends made for weddings, retirements, Father's Days, and "just because."

But mostly, it means an enormous amount of help from people who didn't have to give it.

The people who got us here

None of this happens with two guys and a website. Drew did the artwork and design from day one — the labels, the lab, all of it. Our developer friend Ian helped us build the first iterations of the site and more recently we've had a lot of help from the amazing Maria. The distilleries and suppliers who've trusted us with their casks, often on the strength of a friendship rather than a contract. The festivals who've had us back year after year. The collaborators who've trusted us to put their name on a bottle. And our families, who have put up with a frankly unreasonable amount of whisky-related chat at the dinner table for a decade and a half.

The thousands of blenders

And then there's you. All of you. Thousands — hard to believe how many thousands — of people who've sat down at the Lab, picked some flavours that sounded good, and made something that didn't exist anywhere else in the world until you made it. Every single one of those blends are a tiny version of someone's taste, sense of humour, or a gift for someone they love.

We started this because we wanted to be part of whisky in a way we weren't before. Fifteen years on, it turns out the best part was never the whisky industry side of it at all — it's been watching people have fun with something we built in our spare time, from a drunken dream, and good friendship.

Thank you. Genuinely. Here's to the next fifteen.