The Whisky Exchange BLOG

Yes, it’s competition time again – and this time we’re upping the stakes with a truly fantastic prize: £500 credit at The Whisky Exchange!!  Our sister company Speciality Drinks Ltd are going to launch a new premium bourbon soon – and they want YOUR help.  They’ve been racking their brains for something to call this precious liquid- and though they’ve had a few ideas, they’re not totally convinced.  They reckon that there’s a great name out there, but they just can’t put their finger on it.  So they’ve come to The Whisky Exchange Blog: send me your ideas, and if SDL decide that yours is the best, they’ll stick it on the bottle – and you’ll get  £500 credit at TWE!!!   

SDL's fancy new bourbon - what would you call it?

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Time for some more tasting notes now, but first a quick check on the predictions…

Well, the Ardbeg debate has definitely kicked off on the forums, with the news that the official website have raised their price of Ardbeg 10yo to £36.99 and the other two major online whisky sites selling out (or at least declaring that they’re out of stock). That’s one tick for the predictions (although as I said at the time, it was a total gimme, so it doesn’t really count).

Next up, I’m delighted to report that my last prediction (TWE to continue being the Daddy) is also coming true already, with us being crowned as World Online Whisky Retailer of the Year at Whisky Magazine’s Icons of Whisky awards for the second year running!!  This is particularly gracious of Whisky Magazine, who organise the awards, in the light of some harsh words from these quarters in the not-too-distant past.

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The truth, of course, is rather more mundane, and it’s a fact that working in the drinks industry is often a thankless slog with a routine procession of prosaic tasks and a mountain of irritating or idiotic emails to wade through, just like most other jobs. But it’s also a fact that the fringe benefits are, just occasionally, pretty amazing.  And today is one of those days, as I’ve been allowed, in the interests of your vicarious pleasure, to wade into the collection of legendary malts Sukhinder keeps in his office. 

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Okay, so it’s been a while getting these down – apologies if anyone was waiting (joke). 

Right, firstly I need to apologise to Rob and Dave from Whisky Mag for something I said in the last blog. 

For the record, I am happy to clarify that my speculation about Whisky Mag relying on Diageo sponsorship was totally inaccurate as they haven’t advertised in the magazine for years.  In addition, I would like to make clear that there was never any intention by me to imply that Dave Broom had deliberately given Diageo (or anyone else) favourable editorial coverage.  Hopefully you all know already how much I respect Dave and that I would never question his integrity, but if you don’t, you do now.  I also sincerely hope that none of you took anything that I wrote as attacking either Dave or Rob personally, it was not what I meant at all. I have edited the post to clarify that.

On with the rest of the predictions and hopefully I won’t get myself into more hot water.  Please be aware that the below are just my opinions and speculation, they are not gospel and they certainly do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Whisky Exchange.  As before, if you’re cross or if I’m just plain wrong like last time, I would ask that any factual errors or complaints are reported to me either in the comments or by email (tim[at]thewhiskyexchange.com)  – I will be happy to discuss / fix them as necessary.

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Okay, so the London transport network is f@cked, there’s more snow due this afternoon and I live too far away from work to risk trying to get in and find myself stuck in Park Royal when I try to get home – nearly three hours it took me yesterday.

I’ve also managed to get myself temporarily barred from remotely accessing my work computer by getting my password wrong too many times (because I’m a total numpty). So in fact the only thing I can work at from home today is Wordpress.

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First things first.  Open a new window and listen to this while you’re reading the blog.  It’ll put you in a good mood, and this might be the last you see of me before Christmas, so I want you to be happy.

Anyway, what recession?!!  It’s been so mind-bendingly busy here at TWE Towers that I’ve not had a chance to do any blogging at all in the last month.  It’s got so crazy that I’ve had to go downstairs and get my hands dirty picking orders 12 hrs a day for the last week.  Quelle Horreur!! Even now, I may be dragged back to the coalface at any moment, so I’m going to make this pretty brief.

So, it’s that time of year again.  Octomore, Bruichladdich’s controversial uber-peated behemoth, is back - still as a 5 year-old – and this time, it’s coming with a twist: it’s been finished in wine casks.

 Well, let’s face it - it’s Bruichladdich we’re talking about here.  This was always going to happen.

But these are no mortal wine casks – the world’s peatiest whisky has been finished in casks formerly home to one of the world’s most expensive wines: Chateau Petrus. Does this qualify to be called gilding the lily?

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Well, after the success of the last prize draw for The Whisky Show, I felt kind of bad for all the unlucky applicants – so I asked for more tickets and they said Yes!

This time the tickets are for SATURDAY 7TH NOVEMBER and the Show is on from 12pm-7pm:

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Thank you all for entering the prize draw for The Whisky Show tickets!  I was shocked with the number of entries received.  More importantly, I only had two numpties who couldn’t follow the instructions, so my faith in your intelligence is largely restored!

You're mostly clever after all!

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Yes indeed, I’ve got TEN PAIRS of tickets for The Whisky Show to give away!!

This is what you get – the tickets are for FRIDAY 6TH NOVEMBER and the Show is on from 4pm-10pm:

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Okay, so last night I was lucky enough to attend the press tasting of this year’s special Release from Diageo, the details of all of which are in my last post.  It was a fairly merry affair, although I wasn’t socialising much – firstly because on paper we only had an hour and a half to sample nine cask-strength malts, and secondly because I’m pisspoor at networking – as a card-carrying whisky nerd I can be quite nervous around new folk and whisky ’slebs, and I’m also very poor at feigning interest if I get stuck with someone really boring, which I find particularly excruciating.  Not that I encountered any boring people at last night’s tasting, I hasten to add – on the contrary, everyone that I did speak to was great.

Now, I like to think of my readers as intelligent types, with a healthy mix of up-to-date bespectacled middle-aged intellectuals perusing their laptops from the comfort of a big leather armchair in their libraries, alongside the thrusting, iconoclastic young whisky troubadours taking everything as it comes and making up their own minds on lots of important stuff. 

How I like to think of you all, reading Kerouac with a cup of java

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