Is malt whisky sort of “your thing”? Then ‘Malt Madness’ used to be the website for you.
Launched in 1995, this website used to offer (among other things) a Beginner’s Guide to malt whisky, profiles on most malt (and grain) whisky distilleries in Scotland, an interactive whisky map and a Whisky Lexicon covering hundreds of words and phrases from the whisky world.
Gradually, more and more ‘Malt Maniacs’ joined in the effort and started to contribute content.
As a fairly ‘socialist’ project, it sort of worked in the early days of the web.
The website grew and grew until +/- 2010 – but then the web started to change.
Growing numbers of people started to use smart phones for browsing – and a lot of that browsing
happened on ‘social’ media apps like Facebook and Twitter. I tried to implement a ‘responsive’ design
so that people could also read MM on their smart phones. However, the ‘old skool’ website aimed at
nerds sitting behind their desktop computers just didn’t work as well on smaller screens.
After a massive website crash in 2015, Brexit happened – which meant that Scotch malt whisky
became much harder to find here in my home country. I kept the old content online for a few
years longer, but when the integrated Tweet feed stopped working it seemed I needed to think
about a new approach – or an altogether new platform.
Watch this space for news about the future…
