As a master whisky blender, Robert Hicks’ sense of smell is vital.

Honed over decades, it is so acute he can identify thousands of scents, each one carefully labelled and stored in his memory bank.

He knows of more scents than you could probably name. “It was said once that my nose was insured, but that was just for publicity purposes when I was going abroad,” he says.

“It’s not the nose – it’s the sense of smell, and that sense is in the back of the nose.

“Funny thing is, I worked most of my life with a broken nose without being aware of it. I’d run into a lamp-post when I was eight or nine.

“I was having trouble breathing and had to get it seen to. It had to be repaired by micro-surgery. They couldn’t give me an absolute guarantee that my sense of smell would be intact, but fortunately I still have it.

“It’s true, though, that most people don’t use their sense of smell – they use their nose simply for keeping their glasses on, and that’s about it.”

Robert, who was raised in Dumbarton and lives in Alexandria, has enjoyed a distinguished career in the whisky industry, and has been showered with more awards and commendations than he knows what to do with.

There were three Distiller of the Year awards, and two lifetime achievement awards, one presented in London, the other, late last year, in New York. It all started back in 1964, when Robert was just 19, but his life could have gone in another direction altogether.

“It’s funny to think back now, but I was a Redcoat at Butlins at first,” says Robert, a still-youthful 65.

“My father had his own building company, which was involved in the whisky industry. He had invented the metal racking for whisky barrels back in 1959. Being his son, I had to go out and work with him from an early age.

“But I didn’t want to go to university and we had a little disagreement about that ... I ended up disappearing for about six months and was a Redcoat, in the early 1960s.

He smiles: “You didn’t get paid very much ... but the perks were remarkable.”

Still, Robert gave them up to become a stock clerk at Littlemill whisky bond in Alexandria.

His job entailed poring over an outsize register, painstakingly recording details of every cask of whisky he bought. “I remember thinking at the time, ‘This will do me until I find something better and decide what I’m going to do. Forty-six years later, I’m still doing it – but I honestly haven’t found another job I’d rather do,” he said.

After six years, Robert joined Hiram Walker & Sons as assistant blender. Hiram Walker merged with Allied Lyons in 1987 and Robert rose to become master blender, responsible, at his peak, for some 12 million cases of Scotch every year, including Teacher’s Highland Cream and Laphroaig Islay Single Malt.

He retired from Allied Distillers, the production unit at Allied Domecq, five years ago, but set up a consultancy,

He is contracted to Beam Global Wines and Spirits, Teacher’s current owner, as master blender and worldwide brand ambassador for Teachers and Laphroaig, as well as Ardmore Highland Single Malt.

And worldwide means worldwide. Over the next few weeks Robert will be in Brazil, Singapore, Beijing, Japan, Paris, Johannesburg and Holland, on Teacher’s business or for whisky festivals.

From the age of 11, Robert would go out to work with his father. He said: “People have sometimes asked me, why don’t I get one of own sons into the business, but I didn’t want them to come into it if they didn’t want to.

One is a geo-physicist, the other a geologist, and they both have great jobs.”

After 46 years as one of the best-known faces in the Scotch whisky industry, Robert still feels he has a lot to learn.

“I’ve been very lucky to have been able to do this for so long. It has been good to me – I’m a pensioner now, but I’m still travelling around the world – but it’s also an industry in which you never stop learning. There is so much happening all the time.

His last ambition? “I’d like to chalk up 50 years in the industry if I can,” he says simply. “It’s not very often that something like that happens.”

A part of the history of Glasgow

Teacher’s Highland Cream can be traced back to William Teacher, a businessman and whisky pioneer.

In 1832, aged 21, he began selling his carefully-blended whisky in his wife’s grocery shop. In 1856 he created the first Teacher’s Dram Shop at 450 Argyle Street.

They spread all over the city and were hugely popular. But smoking, inebriation and the buying of rounds were all banned – as were women.

“You were given ‘ration’ tickets and were allowed five glasses of whisky a week or one bottle a fortnight,” says Robert Hicks. The dram shops lasted until 1960. Teacher’s was “perfected” in 1863 and by 1885 it was shipping all over the world.

It is currently the UK’s fourth-largest branded blended whisky, selling some 400,000 cases in the UK every year.

It is also the biggest-selling blended whisky in Brazil, selling more than eight million bottles a year.

For decades, Teacher’s had its head offices at St Enoch Square. The blended whisky has always had a minimum of 45% malt whisky. Its “fingerprint” malt is Ardmore single malt.