Susan Morrison might as well be speaking in a foreign language.

“For me this is like a wet duffel coat,” she says as she hands me what looks like a glass of neat vodka.

It is 11.05am, the first coffee of the day is still inching its way through my system, and my nose is being bombarded by what smells to me not like woolly coats with Paddington Bear buttons, but a particularly malevolent strain of TCP.

“Often for me a new spirit has that aroma,” Miss Morrison says as she reveals that the drink is in fact a colourless whisky that has yet to be set aside to mature. “It takes me back to sitting in class in a wet duffel coat, though obviously that’s not actually going into the spirit.”

Miss Morrison’s descriptions of whisky are nothing if not eloquent. For her, a Macallan single malt evokes an “alcohol-doused Christmas cake”, Dalwhinnie is a feast of honeys and heathers and a glass of Bourbon is akin to “walking into an old-fashioned sweet shop”.

For me, even the finest dram in Scotland seems unlikely to conquer my instinct to pour it immediately into a glass of Coke or the nearest plant, but for those with more sophisticated palates Miss Morrison’s rhapsodies are already striking a chord.

“That's amazing,” says Fraser Peterkin, 36, as he tries a 12-year-old Aberfeldy single malt. “I've just put in the tiniest bit of water and it tastes completely different. You can really smell the marzipan.”

For four years the Scotch Whisky Heritage Centre in Edinburgh, owned collectively by the Scotch industry, has used its “whisky school” to improve the knowledge of those, like Mr Peterkin, employed in the drinks and hospitality sectors.

However, over the past few months demand from amateur enthusiasts has been growing at such a rate that the centre is now about to open the school, the only one of its kind in Scotland, to ordinary whisky lovers on a permanent basis.

So far this year some 15 per cent of those attending its day-long “Certificate of Expertise” courses, which cost £150 per head and include a sensory aroma test, a nosing and tasting session and even a 40-minute exam, were ordinary enthusiasts, including tourists from India, Italy, Germany and Canada.

In addition, several half-day “Enthusiasm for Whisky” courses trialled earlier this year, at a cost of £50 per person, proved so popular that the centre plans to hold them once a month from early next year.

“Originally the course was aimed at the trade but we’re seeing an increasing number of enthusiasts who want to learn more about their hobby,” said Miss Morrison, the centre’s director.

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