One man's excuse…
Laphroaig, despite being the biggest-selling Islay whisky, doesn’t mess around with many special edition bottlings. The distillery has a solid core range, an occasional selection of older and more expensive bottlings, and a few travel retail exclusives, but it focuses almost all of its special-edition efforts on a single bottle each year: Laphroaig Càirdeas.
Continue reading “Laphroaig Càirdeas – with a little help from our friends”
Elixir Distillers has been in the news recently, first getting planning permission for and then finally revealing the name of its Islay distillery: Portintruan. The company is now making what maybe its biggest announcement yet: Elixir Distillers is buying Tormore distillery.
Continue reading “Tormore distillery bought by Elixir Distillers”
I’ve tried to write about The Lakes a few times. I visited shortly after they opened and returned again a couple of years back, during which time it had changed to be almost unrecognisable. It’s a distillery that my opinion has changed about more than any other and with this latest release my opinion has shifted once again. Time to have a look at The Lakes Whiskymaker’s Editions: Liberty.
Continue reading “The Lakes Whiskymaker’s Editions: Liberty”
It’s Fèis Ìle – The Islay Festival of Music and Malt – and, for the second year in a row, it’s not the normal island-population-doubling week of in-person shenanigans. While you can now go and play on Islay, the festival has stayed online, and this week sees a host of virtual events, from quizzes and dances to whisky tastings.
While the festivities have kicked off a day earlier than usual, with Ardnahoe grabbing the Friday, the opening Saturday focuses on Lagavulin, with queues usually snaking out of the distillery shop from first light. Sister distillery Caol Ila joins the fray on Monday, although generally with a quieter affair. However, everything is online this year, including the sales of the special festival bottlings – a Lagavulin 13 Year Old and a Caol Ila 12 Year Old…
Continue reading “Fèis Ìle 2021 – Lagavulin 13yo and Caol Ila 12yo”
Here’s a guest piece from Lee ‘Connas’ Connor – the Distilled Consultant, who you may know from his work with The Whisky Lounge and Scotch Malt Whisky Society – looking into the wonders of Waterford Distillery.
There can be no doubt that when Mark Reynier announced his return to distilling at Waterford, the whisky community was braced for a veritable wave of provenance-centred propaganda. And who can blame him, given his huge success in the regeneration of Bruichladdich Distillery and their ongoing obsessive commitment (even post-Reynier) to transparency in their whisky making process? From a purely commercial point of view, he would be a fool to tweak his trademark outspoken and irreverent image at this point.
What we were perhaps not expecting was the gaping abyss between how Bruichladdich and Waterford make whisky. Yes, it is what is in the bottle that counts, but you would be hard pushed to find two more contrasting single malt distilleries.
Continue reading “Waterford Gristers – a tale of terroir”
There are waves in the drinks world. Ideas that roll around and smash together to create rolling peaks where everyone seems to talk about the same thing for a short time. I really like negronis, and having seen a bunch of mentions of them and the negroni family over the past week, I better jump on before my metaphor breaks. Negroni variation #1: the Boulevardier.
Continue reading “The Negroni Variations: Boulevardier”
It’s almost Christmas and that means it’s time to be on the look out for booze bargains. On the whisky front, there is a lot of discussion about one particular deal – a good whisky, at a good price, with a hidden origin: Lidl Ben Bracken 16 Year Old. But could it secretly be Lagavulin 16 Year Old?
Continue reading “Ben Bracken 16 Year Old and Lagavulin 16 Year Old – are they siblings?”
This past couple of years have seen lots of new independent bottlers hitting the scene. With industry veterans from Italy and groups of mates from St Albans all joining in the race to find and bottle great whiskies, the new independents are a varied crowd. Surprisingly, one of the places without as many newbies is Scotland, so it’s nice to see Dràm Mòr stretching out from its Dumbarton home to expand into the world of bottling its own whiskies.
Continue reading “Dràm Mòr Glen Garioch 2011, Glenrothes 2009 and Benriach 2008”