The Whisky Exchange BLOG

Welcome to the final part of this Whisky Tasting Pentathlon – a mini-marathon of whisky blogs on my recent tasting odyessy.

I was in St. James’s last week for one of Eddie Ludlow’s Whisky Lounge tastings – a run-through of several recent releases from Arran, in the delightful company of brand ambassador Céline Têtu, who came across very well despite the occasional interruptions of some noisy construction works outside the Red Lion pub in Crown Passage, where the tasting was held.  Friendly and informative, Céline’s cause was greatly helped by her fabulous Gallo-Celtic accent, which put me in mind, somehow, of the splendid Julio Geordio from the Fast Show (whose Youtube videos have all been taken down, boo). 

The compact, picturesque Arran distillery

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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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Just received the following stuff on the Diageo Special Releases for this year, so thought I’d better share.  I’m going to a tasting of these tomorrow night, so will post my own impressions later in the week.

The full line-up has already been revealed on various sites, so I won’t publish much of the bumf -  just the official tasting notes and photos for starters. 

Benrinnes

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Continuing our trilogy of blog posts on noteworthy whisky press releases, let’s have a bit about the new Gold Bowmore:

In contrast to Whyte & Mackay’s media-savvy pi$$-taking audaciousness, as discussed in my previous post and here, this press release is rather more of the preachy, hype-driven old school of whisky PR, where every new release is the most massively earth-shattering whisky ever released (until the next one):

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I’m delighted to have a preview bottle of the general release of Ardbeg Corryvreckan sitting on my desk, so I thought I’d dip in and share my thoughts in what has turned out to be the first blog post for a few weeks (due to me busting a gut on a separate project, about which more in the very near future). 

Actually, I’ve had this bottle for over a week, but it’s been embargoed so I had to keep it under my hat.  It wasn’t easy, let me tell you – for one thing, hats don’t suit me.  Also, I have a very small head.

Ardbeg Corryvreckan - not ideal under headgear

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In the interests of full disclosure, and to give any conspiracy theorists out there more grist for their mills, I will begin this blog by revealing that I and several other lucky whisky-lovers will be going to watch a cricket match on Monday as the guest of Richard Paterson and Whyte & Mackay -  Lucky me!  However, the below review has been in the works for the last fortnight and has not been influenced in any way by W&M’s largesse - I promise.

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Well well, what’s this? 

How exciting! Kilchoman 3yo

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This just in from Mark Reynier’s Bruichladdich blog:

New Octomore - same bottle, new box

Apparently this year’s release was peated to 140ppm before distillation.  Yikes!

Octomore bottling line