WHISKY ‘connoisseurs’ are just ruddy-nosed cash dispensers, according to new research.

After a whisky fired into space was said to have aromas of rubber and smoked fish, distillers are focussing on doing more stupid things to get money.

Whisky merchant Roy Hobbs said: “I have a barrel of Speyside which has had a kilt soaking in it for the last three years. The kilt helps ‘reconder the phenaptols’ in the whisky. Two words I just totally made up.

“I’m hoping it will pay for a summer house in France, where they drink real booze made of fruit.”

Whisky was originally invented in China as a more stable version of gunpowder, but was taken up as a drink by the Scots in the 15th Century as a form of suicide to avoid capture by the English.

With ‘space whisky’ expected to sell at 50 times the price of its earth counterpart, distillers are now strapping barrels to a goat, having an old woman shout at them and making them with water extracted from ‘haunted’ peat.

Hobbs said: “It’s just plants and water mashed up in a big vat.”