The Whisky Exchange BLOG

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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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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What with setting up ‘The Whisky Exchange & Friends’ Facebook group (use the button in the sidebar or click here to join), I haven’t had time to do much with the blog this week, but I’m just about caught up now, so here goes: 

I haven’t talked much, if at all, about Irish Whiskey on the blog yet.  This is more by accident than design: I’m from Ireland myself and I love Irish whiskey (although I never drank it while I was growing up there).  I just haven’t got around to talking about it here, so I’m putting that right today.  Look out next week for a few tasting notes on some of my favourite Irish drams.

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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