So, do you come here often?

I bump in to John Campbell, the distillery manager of Laphroaig, in the strangest of places.

I last saw him in a cellar bar close to Baker Street station, where he was dishing out Laphroaig cocktails placed under glass domes pumped full of wood smoke, while other people drank bourbon cocktails from paper bags. Next week it will be the Four seasons hotel inSydney, where he’ll be conducting a worldwide on line whisky tasting.

But today it is the Beaufort Bar at The Savoy in London, and John is struggling to come to terms with the sheer opulence of the room, which is where the hotel’s original cabaret bar was sited.

“It cost millions to renovate this room,” he says with incredulity. “Those vases are 24 carat gold. All this just to say that this is the world’s best hotel?”

He shakes his head in wonder.

And it does seem slightly incongruous to have the manager of a distillery off the coast of Scotland talking about peaty whisky in the heart of wealthy London. John is a humble and unassuming man and a native of the island of Islay and the glitz of the Beaufort Bar couldn’t be less like the rugged beauty of the west coast island. John, though, is well acquainted with such outings and is surprisingly at home here.

“I sort of get it all now,” he says. “But when I go home the people on Islay don’t understand it at all. It’s a different world.”

Equally out of place is the co-host for today’s event. Greg Davis is the master distiller at Maker’s Mark and is good ol’Kentucky through and through. So Islay and Loretto Kentucky is very much two worlds colliding in the most impressive of settings.

This is meant to be the great whisky debate – single malt head to head in battle. But there’s no boxing ring and the settings aren’t conducive to a bare knuckle first fight.

And anyway, Greg Davis and John Campbell are quite possibly the nicest people in the business and far too mannered to strike out at each other.

Saying single malt whisky and bourbon are different sides of the same whisky coin is like saying American Football is the same as soccer because both feature a pitch, two teams and a ball. In every other respect they are different, so this easy to follow guide through each style aimed at barmen was worthwhile and in the hands of our two hosts it was a perfect introduction to both drinks.

It ended with a tasting of both and a question and answer session. What became abundantly clear is that the thirst for knowledge on premium spirits such as single malt whisky and bourbon is becoming ever greater.

If you get the chance to attend a session like this, take it. A great way to spend two educative hours.