Browsing Posts by Author: Tim F

It’s a matter of record that I’m a huge fan of Irish Distillers, as evidenced by all manner of embarrassing fanboy gushing across the virtual pages of this blog.  I was obviously over the moon,…

A press release lands on our doormat with a small bottle.  Not an unusual occurrence; but this is a far from usual bottle, as it contains no less than Highland Park 40 year old.  I…

In the latest of our TWE super-features (following on from our great Vodka exploration and follow-up on continuous distillation a couple of months ago), I’ve spent some time discovering the rich history of mezcal, Mexico’s…

Phew! The Whisky Show is finally over for another year.  This was our biggest and best Show yet, with dozens of exhibitors serving over 500 different spirits (not all of them were whisky…) in an…

So, it’s finally Whisky Show Eve.  This is a day that at TWE generally involves lots of  running around doing last-minute checks, affixing labels to bottles, amending enormous spreadsheets and general fretting about whether there’s…

Ah, Signatory. Finally the secret can be revealed. Some time ago, back in April in fact, a delegation from TWE made a trip up to Scotland, to Pitlochry and Elgin, on a secret mission. The…

So today we have three new Compass Box goodies to have a go at, which is great because, remarkably, this week marks the fifth year since The Whisky Exchange Whisky Blog (snappy title) first slithered…

Today’s review is of one of the most important, most-revered books about whisky ever written, Whisky by Aeneas Macdonald, which was first published in an edition of 1600 copies by Porpoise Press in 1930.  My…

Tomatin has crept under the radar recently to become something of the hipster-namecheck distillery of the moment.  This unexpected turn of events is probably down to a number of factors which include the revamp of…

St George’s distillery have been releasing their whiskies as Chapters for a few years now.  It’s a pleasing conceit: each release takes the story of the development of England’s first malt whisky distillery in 300…

It’s difficult to believe that Her Maj has been sixty years on the throne.  But on 2nd June 1953, Elizabeth Windsor was crowned Sovereign of the United Kingdom and Commonwealth territories in Westminster Abbey. A…

Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart was a very interesting man.  His book, Scotch: The Whisky of Scotland in Fact and Story, appeared in 1951 when its author was in his sixties and approaching the twilight of…

As you may already be aware, each year since 1999 there has been a festival of jazz in Islay.  This is not to be confused with the annual Feis Ile, aka the Islay Festival of Music…

A week or two ago I was writing the text for our shiny (and, of course, fascinating) new TWE Guide to Vodka, and while trying to explain the process of continuous distillation I went into too much…

First published in 2006, Charles MacLean’s Whisky Tales is an expanded version of his hugely popular MacLean’s Miscellany of Whisky, which had first appeared two years earlier and is today more widely disseminated and easier…

Ode on a Laphroaig Thou still unravish’d cask of quietness, Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time, Wooden historian, who canst thus express A barley tale more sweetly than our rhyme: What smoke-tinged legend hangs…

David Daiches’s book Scotch Whisky: Its Past and Present, first appeared in 1969, and was popular enough that a revised edition appeared in 1976, of which my copy is the paperback. I am not sure where…

At the excellent Auchentoshan Taste Experiments show I went to a week or two ago, I had a minor revelation during Rachel Barrie’s chat about how chemistry affects the DNA of whisky. It occurred when…