There are three kinds of people in the world; those who are good at math and those who aren’t. As you can see, I’m in the latter group. I just never liked it as a child and even now the disposition remains.

I will admit, however, that I was relatively proud of the ability in my early years to make certain numbers so unrecognizable that I could reasonably argue they were something else entirely. What I mean, for example, is that a carefully crafted eight—one whose edges are purposefully faded—could quite easily be established as a careless three. Or with a little bit of intention, a five’s corpus could be crafted so tightly that I could convince a teacher that, no, I wasn’t off by one, but rather found six to be the answer like everyone else. Look here. See my six. Yes it looks like a scrunched five, but it isn’t. It’s a six.

If only the look in my eyes didn’t give me away so easily and so often.

Of course mathematics are a daily involvement for most of us. Whether it’s reconciling a bank statement or figuring out which whisky you can afford after that year-long snatching of coins from couches, parking lots, and pillows where your child’s tooth had previously rested, mathematics is ever with us.

By the way, in order to successfully retrieve money from beneath the pillow of a slumbering youngster, some contemplative calculations born from both physics and geometry will be needed, which means that before you ever get to a place where you can wrestle with guilt for the effort, you’ll need to wrestle with maneuvers sopping with math. Although, whatever the grappling, it might well be worth it if the outcome is the Tomatin Dualchas. This is a really great, low cost whisky.

More than affordable by way of your loose change jar, the Dualchas can be acquired in most circumstances for less than $30. I don’t know how Tomatin can afford to do this. Either their accountant is as skilled in math as I am, which means the distillery will most likely be closing soon, or he is exceptional in math and has brilliantly worked the numbers in a way that brings this remarkable whisky to the consumers for a third of the cost of others on higher shelves that aren’t even as good. I’m guessing that the latter is true. In fact, the naming of the whisky hints to such creative maneuverings. Dualchas is the Gaelic form of “legacy,” or more accurately, “cultural heritage.” Apparently, Tomatin was told they could not sell a whisky in the United States called Legacy, and so with that, they figured out how to do it anyway.

Hey, liquor control commissions of the world, put that in your pipe and smoke it! And while you’re doing that, we’ll tip back a dram or two of the Dualchas, being sure to savor the magic of a successful equation.

With a nose of honey-butter and sweet malt, the Dualchas begins on the lighter side. But in a sip’s moment, it brings to these previous addends a cluster of grains in eddying creaminess.

Like a simple exercise in addition, the resultant finish is a short and well-balanced sum of everything from the nose and palate, except here I’d say that the butter is the most prevalent of its parts.

For the cost, I’ll be keeping a few of these in my various cabinets. And I dare say I may not even need to continue my late night swipes from the Tooth Fairy’s generosity to make it happen. Speaking of, I’d better stop doing that, anyway. The Tooth Fairy in our house is pretty good at math—especially subtraction—so when the kids are beaming with excitement at a most recent gift that is a dollar or two less than what was actually placed there while I show up with a new bottle of whisky, she becomes suspicious. At this point, she’s been chalking it up to forgetfulness, but I’m pretty sure that won’t last much longer.