The Times recently set out to hoodwink a whisky expert with (un)expected results.

This sort of thing happens relatively regularly in the drinks industry where cynics like to puncture pompous reputations, but professional tasters usual smell the rat long before. In this case, in what the newspaper called a "piece of mischief-making", it set out to prove that a whisky expert with 30 years of experience would rate an English whisky higher than a Scottish dram.

The wheeze was inspired by the recent release of St Georges single malt, the newly released English spirit.

The irregualar tasting, organised by the mischievous hacks, achieved its goal of ridiculing the poor old whisky expert, but perhaps not in quite the way that they had originally expected. The winner of the taste-test ended up being not St George's but a Taiwanese whisky called Kavalan, a whisky that is, nudge, nudge, not actually available in the UK.

It took a "working lunch" for the hacks to reach their conclusion.  Each was “nosed, then eyeballed through Mr MacLean’s red-rimmed monocle" for its colour, and finally sipped, before scores out of ten were noted. Poor old Charlie headed the panel of "fellow experts" of Times hacks and also Geraldine Coates, a gin expert, Zubair Mohamed, a wine dealer, and Paul Laverty a screenwriter. McLean gasped when the winner was announced: "Oh, God. Is this an April fool?"

No, Charlie, it's Burns' Night.

The results of the 40%, mainly blended whiskies, were: Kavalan 27.5 , Langs 22 , King Robert 20, St Georges 15.5 (cask strength?). Three year old Bruichladdich X4+3 came last of the five, barely troubling the scorers.  The quadruple-distilled single malt, bottled at 63.5%,  and described by James May and Oz Clarke as a Nirvana dram, was here dismissed somewhat harshly by the "illustrious panel" as “sewing machine oil” that “burns your lips".

And your ears Charlie.